-^^  OF  fmo^^. 


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rhe  TEACHINGS  of 
JESUS  in  PARABLES 


By  REV.  GEORGE  HENRY  HUBBARD 


BOSTON 

NEWYORK  CHICAGO 


COPYRIGHT  1906 

BY  THE  CONGREGATIONAL  SUNDAY-SCHOOL 

AND  PUBLISHING  SOCIETY 


J^^  O  the  memory  of 
^^  the  late  Archibald 
Duff,  D.D.,  of  Sher- 
brooke,  Que.,  from 
whom  I  derived  my 
first  ideals  of  Scripture 
exposition,  this  volume 
is  reverently  dedicated. 


CONTENTS 


N» 


Interpretation  of  the  Parables xiii 

INTRODUCTORY  PARABLE 
Chapter  Page 

I.    Jesus'    Introduction    to    His    Parables. 

The   Sower 3 


MAJOR  GROUP 

PARABLES  OF  THE  KINGDOM 

dl.    The  Vitality  of  Character.    The  Grow- 
ing Seed 17 

III.  The   Conservation   of   Character,     The 

Wheat  and  the  Tares '.  31 

IV.  The  Growth  of  Character.     The  Mus- 

tard   Seed 45 

V.     The  Influence  of  Character.  The  Leaven  57 

VI.     The  Value  of  Character.    The  Treasure  71    J 

VII.    The  Cost  of  Character.    The  Merchant- 
man and  the  Pearl 85     3 


vii 


CONTENTS— Co«/;n«ir^ 
Chapter  Page 

VIII.     The    Completion    of    Character.      The 

Drag-net   99 

IX.     Character  an  Interpreter  of  Truth.   The 

Householder  and  His  Treasure..    ..113 

X.     The  Equation  of  Character.    The  Vine- 
yard  Laborers 127 

V.      XL     Forgiveness     a     Factor     in     Character 

Building.    The  Unforgiving  Servant . .  141 

XII.     Character    and    Salvation    Inseparable. 

The  Marriage  Feast 153 

■N  XIII.     The     Test    of     Character.      The     Ten 

Virgins 165 

XIV.     The  Law  of  Character.    The  Talents..  177 

V    XV.     Christly  Character  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

The  Pounds 191 

MINOR  GROUPS 

THREE  PARABLES  OF  THE  NEW  AND  OLD 

XVI.     The  Patchwork.    The  New  Cloth  in  the 

Old   Garment 205 

XVII.     The  Expansive  Force  of  Living  Experi- 
ence.   The  New  Wine  in  Old  Bottles. 2 17 

XVIII.     Self-satisfied  Conservatism.     The  Rev- 
eler    229 

viil 


COHTENTS— Continued 
Chapter  ^e 

THREE   TARADLED   OF   LOOT   THINGS 

XIX.     Counting  the  Cost.  The  Tower  Builder. 241 

XX.     Courage  and  Cowardice.    The  Warring 

King 255 

THREE    PARABLES   OF   LOST   THINGS 

XXI.    The  Lost  Sheep.    The  Good  Shepherd. 269 
XXII.     The  Lost  Coin.    The  Piece  of  Money. .  .283 

XXIII.  The  Lost  Son.     The  Prodigal  and  the 

'  Drudge 297 

■  THREE  PARABLES  OF  PRAYER 

XXIV.  Prayer,  not  a  Form  but  a  Force.     The 

Friend  at  Midnight 311 

XXV.     The   Power   of   Persistence.     The   Im- 
portunate Widow 323 

XXVI.     Exaltation    Through     Humility.       The 

Pharisee  and  the  Publican 335 

TWO  PARABLES  ON  THE  USE  OF  WEALTH 

XXVII.     The  Wise  Use  of  Wealth.     The   Un- 
righteous   Steward 349 

XXVIII.     An     Impassable     Barrier.      Dives     and 

Lazarus    363 


CO  NTENTS— Co«//««*^ 
Chapter  Page 

MISCELLANEOUS  PARABLES 

I  XXIX.    The  Empty  House.     Spiritual  Relapse. 375 

XXX.    The    Proof   of   Obedience.     The    Two 

Sons    385 

XXXI.     The  Irrepressible  Conflict.    The  Wicked 

Husbandmen   397 

XXXII.    The   Law  of  Spiritual  Reaction.     The 

Two   Debtors 409 

XXXIII.  Neighborhood.    The  Good  Samaritan.  .421 

XXXIV.  God's  Fool.     The  Rich  Husbandman.  .433 

^  XXXV.  Preparation  for  the  Coming  of  the  Son 
of  Man.  The  Householder  and  the 
Thief    447 

XXXVI.     The   Peril   and   Penalty  of  Usefulness. 

The  Fruitless  Tree 459 

XXXVII.     Excuses.     The  Great  Supper 471 

XXXVIII.     The    Christian    Ideal    of    Duty.     The 

Ploughing   Servant 483 

XXXIX.     A  Concluding  Parable  of  Jesus.     The 

Two  Builders 40 


Interpretation 
of  the  Parables 


Interpretation  of  the  Parables 


A  story  is  the  universal  language  of  humanity.  Idi- 
oms, proverbs,  words,  often  lose  their  significance  by 
translation  from  one  language  to  another,  or  their  mean- 
ing becomes  obscured  by  the  natural  development  of  the 
language  in  which  they  were  uttered.  But  a  story  is  the 
same  in  all  times  and  tongues.  It  is  a  living  embodiment 
of  truth.  Its  charm  is  perennial.  Its  meaning  is 
undimmed  by  the  passing  of  the  years,  and  age  abates 
nothing  of  its  force. 

The  "Fables  of  ^^sop"  speak  just  as  plainly  and  as 
effectively  to  the  English  or  American  mind  of  the  pres- 
ent day  as  they  did  to  the  Greek  mind  of  twenty-five 
centuries  ago ;  while  the  utterances  of  Plato  and  Socrates 
and  even  the  poems  and  plays  of  their  time  have  long 
been  a  dead  language  to  most  men.  The  "Arabian  Nights" 
stories  have  lost  none  of  their  original  fascination  by 
traveling  from  East  to  West,  from  century  to  century, 
from  language  to  language,  though  there  is  little  else  in 
the  literature  of  Persia  or  Arabia  that  excites  our  in- 
terest or  touches  our  life.  Chaucer's  "Canterbury  Tales" 
still  charm  every  reader  with  their  pictures  of  old  English 
life  and  thought,  although  the  writings  of  the  philoso- 
phers and  preachers  of  Chaucer's  day  have  long  since 
become  dull  and  meaningless.  The  character,  the  history, 
the  religion  of  any  nation  is  best  learned  through  the 
medium  of  its  folk-lore. 

What  need,  then,  to  reiterate  the  trite  question.  Why 
did  Jesus  speak  in  parables?  How  else,  pray,  should  he 
speak?  How  else  make  himself  clearly  understood  by  all 
men  everywhere  and  throughout  all  time  ?    Jesus  was  the 

xiii 


INTERPRETATION 

universal  Teacher.  He  spoke  to  the  world;  therefore  h< 
used  the  world  language.  He  chose  that  form  of  teach- 
ing which  would  be  most  plain  to  the  unlearned,  most 
stimulating  to  the  thoughtful,,  and  most  attractive  to  all ; 
that  form  which  would  convey  the  truth  most  forcibly 
and  preserve  it  most  securely. 

There  is  also  another  reason.  As  true  education  Is  not 
pouring  knowledge  into  the  mind,  but  rather  drawing 
out  the  mind  itself,  so  salvation  is  not  something  be- 
stowed from  without,  but  rather  the  quickening  and  'le- 
velopment  of  spiritual  life  already  existing  but  dormr.nt 
in  the  soul.  It  follows  that  the  most  valuable  truth,  'he 
truth  that  does  the  most  good  either  intellectually  or  spir- 
itually, is  that  which  we  think  out  for  ourselves.  Reau/- 
made  truth  adds  little  to  our  mental  power  or  equipment. 
Character  cannot  be  perfected  by  the  mere  teaching  of 
another,  even  though  he  be  the  Christ.  It  is  the  fniit 
of  personal  effort,  the  outgrowth  of  personal  convictinn. 
So  Jesus  would  set  men  thinking.  Having  given  them 
a  groundwork  of  elementary  truth,  he  would  stimulate 
them  to  seek  for  more  truth  on  their  own  account.  Hav- 
ing plainly  declared  the  underlying  principles  upon  which 
his  kingdom  rests,  he  would  have  them  work  out  the 
specific  problems  for  themselves.  Only  in  this  way  could 
the  spiritual  growth  and  progress  of  his  disciples  be 
assured.  And  the  parable  is  the  best  possible  means  for 
accomplishing  his  purpose. 

To  the  thoughtless  hearer  a  story  is  of  little  worth. 
Who  reads  a  fable  and  blinks  the  moral  is  no  better  for 
his  reading.  We  are,  in  fact,  often  made  worse  by 
thoughtless  reading  and  hearing.  Your  frivolous  novel 
reader,  for  example,  who  reads  for  the  story  alone,  vi- 
tiates both  character  and  intellect  by  the  habit ;  but  he  who 
sees  in  every  tale  a  picture  of  life  or  a  disclosure  of  truth, 
reads  to  some  purpose.  He  is  made  wiser  and  better  by 
everything  that  he  reads,  whether  it  be  history  or  myth, 
poem  or  novel.     For  him  the  flowers  of  literature  yield 


OF       THE       PARABLES 

not  only  perfume  and  beauty,  but  rich  store  of  honey  as 
well.  Or,  again,  your  careless  hearer  of  the  gospel, 
and  there  are  multitudes  of  such  hearers,  who  hears  only 
to  admire  or  criticize,  and  never  to  apply  and  practise, 
becomes  gradually  gospel -hardened,  and  the  truth  which 
should  be  a  savor  of  life  unto  life  is  transformed  to 
be  the  savor  of  death  unto  death. 

This  is  a  universal  law  of  nature.  The  food  which 
gives  strength  to  the  laboring  man  and  fits  him  the  bet- 
ter for  his  toil,  may  bring  discomfort  and  sickness  to  the 
luxurious  idler.  The  weight  which  builds  up  the  mus- 
cles of  the  athlete  would  crush  the  child.  The  problem 
whose  solution  strengthens  the  mind  of  the  reasoner  only 
makes  him  the  more  parrot-like  and  mechanical  who 
takes  his  solution  from  his  neighbor.  In  other  words, 
"Unto  you  it  is  given  to  know  the  mysteries  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  but  to  them  it  is  not  given.  For  whoso- 
ever hath,  to  him  shall  be  given,  and  he  shall  have  abun- 
dance :  but  whosoever  hath  not,  from  him  shall  be  taken 
away  even  that  which  he  hath.  Therefore  speak  I  to 
them  in  parables ;  because  seeing  they  see  not,  and  hear- 
ing they  hear  not,  neither  do  they  understand." 

No  teaching  ever  uttered  has  been  more  simple  than 
the  parables  of  Jesus,  yet  none  has  been  more  wofully 
distorted.  They  have  been  made  the  stalking-horse  for 
all  kinds  of  false  doctrine  and  not  a  little  sheer  nonsense 
besides.  Every  such  miscarriage  of  their  purpose  has  re- 
sulted, however,  not  from  any  real  obscurity  in  the  para- 
bles themselves,  but  from  false  methods  of  interpreta- 
tion, from  carelessness  in  treatment,  and  from  a  too  free 
use  of  the  imagination.  Curiously  enough  the  majority 
of  expositors  depart  frequently  from  the  rules  and  prin- 
ciples which  they  themselves  lay  down  at  the  beginning 
of  their  work,  being  led  astray  by  the  influence  of  tra- 
dition, the  seductions  of  profound  scholarship,  or  the 
temptations  of  indolence.  It  is  not  so  necessary,  there- 
fore, to  frame  new  rules  of  interpretation  as  it  is  to  re- 


INTERPRETATION 

state  those  now  commonly  accepted  and  to  insist  upon 
strict  adherence  to  them.  And  this  latter  is  not  so  easy 
a  matter  as  it  would  seem,  in  view  of  the  conventional 
interpretations  that  have  become  familiar  to  every  Bible 
student,  the  influence  of  which  it  is  difficult  to  escape. 
All  rules  of  interpretation  must  grow  out  of  the  nature 
of  the  parable  and  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  uttered. 

The  purpose  of  the  parable  we  have  already  discussed. 
What  of  its  nature? 

What  is  a  parable?  A  story?  Not  always,  though  it 
always  partakes  of  the  nature  of  a  story.  A  mere  figure 
of  speech  ?  Usually  more  than  that.  A  fable  ?  No ;  for 
it  is  not  necessarily  impossible.  A  myth?  No;  for  it 
may  be  true.  A  parable  is  a  word-picture.  As  such  it 
may  represent  a  real  scene  or  an  imaginary  one,  a  prob- 
able occurrence  or  an  improbable  one.  It  may  take  any 
of  the  varied  forms  which  we  observe  in  the  products 
of  brush  or  pencil.  It  may  resemble  the  "Christ  before 
Pilate"  or  "The  Last  Supper,"  with  every  detail  carefully 
wrought  out  and  finished;  or  it  may  be  like  a  Japanese 
picture  consisting  merely  of  a  half  dozen  suggestive  lines 
and  much  left  to  the  imagination.  It  may  be  the  full  can- 
vas of  "The  Prodigal  Son"  or  "The  Ten  Virgins" ;  or  it 
may  be  a  hasty  sketch  of  "The  Lost  Sheep,"  or  the  mere 
"study"  of  the  "Unclean  Spirit"  in  Matt.  12:43-45.  In  any 
case  it  is  the  embodiment  of  one  central  thought  to  which 
all  details  are  subordinate.  It  is  not  a  string  of  pearls, 
or  a  connected  series  of  truths.  It  is  a  single  gem  with 
such  setting  or  background  as  shall  display  it  to  the  best 
advantage.  The  parable  is  like  a  lens,  which  gathers 
many  of  the  sun's  rays  and  brings  them  to  a  focus  upon 
a  single  point.  It  is  like  a  circle  with  many  radii  of 
detail  meeting  at  the  center,  and  this  center  it  is  which 
the  expositor  is  concerned  to  find. 

Of  course,  I  am  aware  that  this  definition  of  the  para- 
ble is  somewhat  elastic.    It  could  not  be  otherwise ,  for 

arvi 


OF       THE       PARABLES 

it  is  impossible  to  draw  hard  and  fast  lines  between  this 
and  other  rhetorical  figures,  and  there  must  ever  remain  a 
few  utterances  which  will  occupy  the  borderland  between 
parable  and  trope,  and  concerning  which  each  expositor 
must  exercise  the  right  of  private  judgment.  With  the 
scholar  who  defines  "parable"  differently  I  have  no  quar- 
rel, but  I  have  a  serious  quarrel  with  him  who  wastes,  in 
arguing  for  his  definition,  time  and  thought  that  might  be 
spent  far  more  profitably  upon  the  study  of  the  para- 
bles themselves. 

For  the  perfect  interpretation  of  our  Lord's  parables 
but  two  conditions  are  requisite.  They  are  (a)  a  child- 
like receptiveness  of  mind,  unprejudiced  and  eager, 
and  (b)  thoughtful  attention  that  looks  beyond  the  mere 
story  or  picture  and  seeks  to  discover  the  truth  which  it 
embodies.  Besides  these  two  conditions  alone,  nothing 
is  needed  but  the  most  ordinary  intelligence. 

The  great  danger  is  that  we  shall  read  too  much  into 
the  parable  and  not  enough  out  of  it,  that  we  shall  seek 
an  independent  message  in  each  minute  detail,  and  that 
we  shall  try  to  square  the  whole  with  our  preconceived 
notions  of  truth  and  righteousness.  We  are  prone  to  for- 
get that  we  are  dealing  with  a  simple  story  or  sketch, 
and  look  upon  it  as  a  dark  riddle.  This  is  the  frequent 
mistake  of  scholars.  Take  for  illustration  the  "Essential 
Conditions  of  Interpretation,"  as  laid  down  by  Dr. 
Arnot.  He  says :  "Of  the  parables  it  is  particularly  true 
that  faith  is  necessary  to  the  full  appreciation  of  their 
meaning.  Another  cognate  requisite  is  sympathy  with 
the  view  which  Jesus  took  of  human  nature  in  its  fallen 
state.  Subordinate  qualifications  are:  i.  The  faculty  of 
perceiving  and  appreciating  analogies.  2.  A  stern  logic. 
3.  Some  competent  acquaintance,  not  only  with  the 
Scriptures,  but  also  with  the  doctrines  which  the  Scrip- 
tures contain,  arranged  in  a  dogmatic  system.  4.  Some 
knowledge  of  relative  history,  topography  and  customs." 

Who,  then,  is  sufficient  for  these  things?     Here  is 

xvii 


INTERPRETATION 

scholarship  and  the  habit  of  exposition  run  wild.  "Log- 
ic !"  Then  the  parables  are  not  for  the  average  woman. 
"Dogmatic  theology !"  That  closes  the  door  on  most  of 
the  laity  and  some  of  the  clergy  as  well.  "Ancient 
history,  topography,  customs !"  Many  of  us  are  too  busy 
to  learn  much  of  these.  If  one  must  possess  all  of  these 
qualifications  in  order  to  interpret  them,  how  foolish 
of  our  Lord  to  have  uttered  the  parables  to  the  multitude ! 
Not  one  in  a  thousand  of  his  immediate  hearers  pos- 
sessed all  of  these  qualifications.  Few  possessed  any  of 
them.  And  the  same  is  true  of  those  who  have  read  the 
parables  in  subsequent  ages.  Yet  he  embodied  the  bulk 
of  his  gospel  in  parables,  and  they  have  been  under- 
stood by  common  people  in  all  ages. 

No,  no !  We  must  cast  aside  the  lumber  of  the  schools, 
the  microscopical  analysis  of  grammar  and  lexicon,  the 
massive  enginery  of  scientific  and  historical  study,  and 
we  must  take  the  parables  in  their  simplicity,  or  we  shall 
surely  miss  the  lessons  they  were  intended  to  teach. 
Do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  would  not  belittle  the  value 
of  scholarship  and  research.  Not  at  all.  But  I  say  that 
these  may  be  and  often  are  misused  in  the  interpretation 
of  Jesus'  teachings.  It  is  well  to  know  all  about  "values" 
and  "tones"  in.  color,  and  to  understand  the  laws  of  per- 
spective and  much  more  that  pertains  to  the  art  of  paint- 
ing; yet  one  may  be  able  to  appreciate  and  enjoy  a  fine 
picture  without  any  of  these  things.  And  on  the  other 
hand,  one  thoroughly  instructed  in  them  all  may  lose  the 
best  effect  of  some  fine  production  through  excessive  at- 
tention to  technical  criticism.  In  the  same  way  an  un- 
due regard  for  scholarly  tradition  and  methods  may  ob- 
scure simple  truth  which  th^  untramraeled  mind  would 
grasp  in  a  moment. 

The  essential  truth  of  a  parable  is  that  which  lies 
plainly  upon  its  surface.  Any  other  truths  which  we 
may  draw  from  it  are  merely  incidental,  and  have  no 
basis  of  Christly  authority.    The  lesson  of  every  parable 


OF       THE       PARABLES 

is  that  which  appears  as  readily  to  the  mind  of  a  child  as 
to  that  of  the  mature  and  careful  scholar. 

But  why  study  the  parables  if  they  are  so  simple? 
Why,,  indeed?  Because  the  value  of  a  parable  does  not 
depend  upon  the  new  and  varied  truth  that  we  are  able 
to  extort  from  it,  but  upon  our  progressive  and  practical 
application  of  its  single  truth  to  our  daily  life.  The  mar- 
vels of  kaleidoscopic  interpretation  and  the  adornments 
of  scholarly  research  that  appear  in  most  writings  on  the 
parables  are  indicative  of  shallow  and  discursive  thought 
rather  than  of  profound  insight.  It  requires  more 
thought  and  concentration  to  develop  the  one  truth  that 
lies  in  the  parable  than  it  does  to  read  into  it  any  number 
of  truths,  however  ingenious,  that  have  no  proper  place 
there. 

How,  then,  shall  we  interpret  the  parables?  The  an- 
swer has  already  been  given,  at  least  by  implication.  We 
must  strive  to  emphasize  and  to  apply  the  one  truth 
which  the  parable  plainly  teaches.  We  are  not  concerned 
with  the  details  which  are  necessary  to  make  a  complete 
story.  If  we  treat  the  details  at  all,  it  must  be  to  make 
them  tributary  to  the  central  thought.  We  must  show 
how  they  lead  up  to  that  and  help  to  make  its  bearing 
plain.  We  must  remember  that  the  parable  is  a  lens  in 
which  we  catch  many  rays  of  divine  truth  and  focus  them 
upon  a  single  point.  And  the  more  perfectly  they  are 
focused  the  greater  will  be  the  effect. 

An  old  story  is  in  point,  of  an  artist  who  had  painted 
'The  Last  Supper."  A  friend  seeing  the  picture  spoke 
with  admiration  of  some  exquisite  tracery  in  a  subordi- 
nate part.  The  painter  immediately  dashed  his  brush  up- 
on it  and  blotted  it  out,  exclaiming,  "Nothing  must  be 
seen  but  the  face  of  the  Lord !  The  rest  is  designed  only 
to  draw  attention  to  that!"  So  in  the  word-picture;  if 
therebe  not  unity  of  effect  its  purpose  is  stultified. 

This  canon  of  interpretation  is  generally  acknowledged 
in  theory,  but  few  adhere  to  it  in  practise  with  real  strict- 


INTERPRETATION 

ness.  Too  often  the  parables  are  made  fields  for  the  ex- 
ercise of  the  fancy,  and  we  have  such  expositions  as  this 
of  the  parable  of  "The  Good  Samaritan :" — "The  man 
who  fell  among  thieves  was  Adam;  the  thieves  were  the 
devil  and  his  angels ;  the  priest  and  the  Levite  were  the 
Mosaic  dispensation ;  the  good  Samaritan  was  Christ  him- 
self; the  oil  and  the  wine  were  the  comforts  and  bless- 
ings of  the  Gospel ;  the  beast  on  which  he  rode  was  the 
humanity  of  Christ;  the  setting  of  the  wounded  man 
thereon  was  his  vicarious  salvation;  the  inn  was  the 
Church ;  and  the  two  pence,  the  life  that  now  is  and  the 
life  to  come."  A  marvel  of  expository  genius  this,  truly ! 
But  where  in  all  this  play  of  the  fancy  do  we  find  an 
answer  to  the  question,  "Who  is  my  neighbor?"  And 
the  parable  had  no  other  purpose  than  to  answer  that 
question. 

Again,  parables  are  made  a  broad  and  shady  pasture 
for  weary  minds.  Alen  treat  them  after  the  method  of 
running  exposition,  because  it  is  easier  than  to  hold  the 
mind  to  a  single  topic.  What  is  the  result?  What 
could  it  be  but  confusion  and  mistiness  ?  It  is  simply  ab- 
surd to  treat  the  parables  by  what  is  commonly  known  as 
the  "expository"  method.  Suppose  an  art  teacher  were 
giving  to  his  class  a  critique  of  some  great  painting.  Can 
you  imagine  him  gravely  beginning  at  the  left  of  the 
picture  and  discussing  it  line  by  line,  figure  by  figure,  till 
he  reached  the  right  side,  and  perhaps  saying  nothing  at 
all  with  reference  to  the  plan  and  purpose  and  meaning 
of  the  picture  as  a  whole  ?  "  Ridiculous !"  you  say.  Of 
course  it  is.  Yet  that  is  what  men  frequently  do  with  the 
parables,  and  call  it  treating  them  by  the  "expository" 
method.    What  a  libel  on  exposition ! 

The  true  interpretation  of  a  parable  is  not  expository 
in  this  sense,  but  topical.  It  looks  first  of  all  to  find  the 
central  thought  which  the  parable  was  designed  to  em- 
body, and  it  treats  every  detail  with  reference  to  its  bear- 


OF       THE       PARABLES 

ing  upon  this  thought.  For  example,  the  parable  of  "Thevl3^ 
Sower"  clusters  about  the  words,  "Take  heed  therefoLe 
how  ye  hear."     The  one  purpose  of  its  fourfold  picture 
IS  to  impress  upon  every  individual  in  the  Master's  audi- 
ence the  necessity  of  personal  attention  to  the  truth. 

Treated  by  the  usual  method,  the  parables  of  "The 
Tares  of  the  Field"  and  the  "Drag-net"  cover  much 
common  ground.  Treated  topically  they  are  wholly  dis- 
tinct. The  former  inculcates  present  tolerance  toward 
error;  the  latter  is  a  promise  of  the  ultimate  separa- 
tion between  truth  and  error,  good  and  evil.  The  par- 
ables of  "The  Mustard  Seed"  and  "The  Leaven"  are  also 
frequently  confused.  Deal  with  them  after  the  method 
of  verbal  exegesis,  and  they  are,  as  one  has  said,  "in  the 
main  coincident."  But  if  we  study  them  as  living  expres- 
sions each  of  a  single  thought  we  shall  find  that  the  great 
Teacher  did  not  repeat  himself  unnecessarily.  The  Mus- 
tard Seed  teaches  the  lesson  of  growth,  the  Leaven,  the 
lesson  of  influence.  The  Wonderful  Growth  of  God's 
Kingdom  is  the  subject  of  the  one  parable;  the  Perva- 
sive Influence  of  the  Kingdom  is  the  subject  of  the  other. 
At  what  part  do  these  topics  coincide  ? 

Again,  we  hear  a  great  deal  about  the  parable  of  "The 
Hidden  Treasure"  and  the  parable  of  "The  Pearl  of 
Great  Price,"  titles  which  of  themselves  indicate  a  con- 
fusion of  the  truths  involved.  Yet  these  are  really  in- 
dependent pictures.  The  central  figure  of  the  former  is 
the  treasure.  "The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a 
treasure,"  says  the  Master.  Your  typical  expositor,  when 
he  comes  to  this  parable,  begins  straightway  with  a  series 
of  questions  as  to  the  application  of  the  word  "hidden" 
to  the  kingdom  of  God,  the  significance  of  the  "field," 
whether  the  man  found  the  treasure  by  chance,  whether 
he  did  right  in  concealing  it,  etc.  Now  all  these  details 
are  necessary  to  the  completeness  of  the  story,  but  they 
have  nothing  to  do  with  its  lesson  excepting  to  concen- 
trate attention  upon  the  central  figure  and  to  aid  in  inter- 


INTERPRETATION 

preting  that  more  vividly.  As  v^^ell  discuss  the  contents 
of  the  wheelbarrow  in  Millet's  'Angelus,"  or  the  material 
of  the  table-cloth  in  Da  Vinci's  "Last  Supper"  as  to  turn 
the  thought  upon  these  literary  details  of  the  parable. 
The  treasure — the  treasure — that  is  the  object  to  keep  in 
mind.  And  the  only  legitimate  use  of  the  parable  is  to 
make  it  a  text  for  a  discourse  upon  "The  Supreme  Value 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven." 

Now  as  to  the  second  parable  of  this  couplet:  What 
is  it?  The  parable  of  "The  Pearl  of  Great  Price"?  No, 
The  Master  does  not  say,  "The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like 
a  pearl."  He  might  have  said  so  and  truthfully ;  but  he 
did  not.  What  he  did  say  is  this:  "The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  like  a  merchantman,"  Properly,  therefore, 
it  is  the  parable  of  "The  Merchantman,"  or,  if  you  choose, 
"The  Merchantman  and  the  Pearl."  The  focus  of  the 
preceding  parable  is  the  treasure ;  of  this,  the  man.  The 
parable  of  "The  Treasure"  illustrates  the  value  of  the 
kingdom.  The  parable  of  "The  Merchantman"  bids  us 
seek  that  kingdom  and  secure  it  at  any  cost.  "A  Man's 
Religion  Worth  What  It  Costs  Him,"  is  a  title  that  well 
expresses  the  theme  of  the  parable  of  "The  Merchant- 
man." Treat  these  two  parables  thus  topically,  and  in- 
stead of  a  useless  repetition  of  one  thought,  you  have  two 
distinct  pictures,  each  conveying  a  vital  lesson  for  every 
Christian  life. 

Not  a  little  valuable  truth  is  lost  by  the  confusion  of 
similar  parables.  "The  Pounds"  and  "The  Talents"  are 
thus  frequently  confounded.  "The  Importunate  Widow" 
and  "The  Friend  at  Midnight"  are  made  to  teach  but 
one  lesson.  The  three  parables  of  Luke  15  are  treated 
as  one  truth  represented  in  three  forms.  The  topical 
method  of  interpretation  brings  out  the  distinction  be- 
tween these  parables  in  each  group  and  so  makes  very 
clear  some  lessons  that  would  otherwise  be  obscured. 

"One  touch  of  nature  makes  the  whole  world  kin." 
The  universal  love  of  a  story  is  the  magic  touch  of  nature 


OF       THE       PARABLES 

that  brings  together  all  classes  of  men,  and  holds  with 
equal  attraction  the  old  and  the  young,  the  wise  and  the 
unwise,  the  rich  and  the  poor.  Hence  the  stories  or  para- 
bles of  Jesus  have  been  in  every  age  the  unfailing 
source  of  most  popular  gospel  preaching.  When  ab- 
stract truth  palls  upon  the  conscience  or  fails  to  reach 
the  understanding,  the  parable  arouses  attention,  quick- 
ens feeling,  and  spurs  to  action.  There  is  that  in  the 
parable  itself  which  will  hold  the  attention  and  stir  the 
soul  even  when  the  exposition  of  it  is  most  commonplace. 
This  is  no  excuse,  however,  for  slovenly  work.  The 
rather  should  we  give  the  parables  our  best  thought  and 
our  most  earnest  study,  since  they  will  repay  us  so  richly. 
"The  parables  of  the  kingdom,"  says  a  German  writer, 
"are,  as  it  were,  a  picture-gallery,  and  we  walk  up  and 
down  examining  each  picture  by  itself.  We  must  not 
forget,  however,  that  these  are  heavenly  pictures  that 
hang  around  us,  that  heavenly  things  are  here  exposed 
to  view.  A  heavenly  interpreter  walks  by  our  side ;  we 
must  have  a  heavenly  sense,  if  we  would  grasp  the  mean- 
ing of  what  we  hear  and  see.  If  our  study  quickens  this 
sense  within  us,  so  that  it  shall  grow  clearer  and  sharper 
before  every  picture,  a  rich  treat  awaits  us;  for  the 
heavenly  gallery  is  great." 


xxm 


Jesus'  Introduction 
to  His  Parables 


CHAPTER  I 

Jesus'  Introduction  to 
His  Parables 

THE   SOWER 

Cf.  Matt.  13:3-8,  18-23;  Mark  4:3-8,  13-20;  Luke  8:4-15 
Text. — '^Take  heed  .  .  .  how  ye  hear!  " — Luke  8:i8 

ALWAYS  read  the  preface  of  a  book.  If  the 
book  be  a  good  one,  the  preface  is  worth 
reading.  If  the  book  be  not  good,  a  glance 
at  the  preface  may  save  valuable  time  by 
showing  its  worthlessness  in  a  few  mo- 
ments. In  any  case  the  preface  will  usually  furnish  the 
key  to  the  pages  that  follow;  and  we  read  them  intelli- 
gently if  we  have  read  it  carefully.  Our  Lord  has  given 
us  a  preface  to  his  parables,  and  only  those  who  master 
the  preface  can  study  the  volume  'vith  profit. 

Seated  in  a  boat  near  the  water's  edge,  with  a  vast 
multitude  gathered  before  him  on  the  shore,  our  Lord 
uttered  that  beautiful  and  instructive  series  of  parables 
contained  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  Matthew's  Gospel. 
He  is  about  to  talk  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven',  but  he 
begins  3vith  a  Jesson  upon  Hearing,  The  other  parables 
of  the  chapter  form  a  distinct  group  bound  together  by 
a  common  topic.  This  parable  reveals  no  vital  con- 
nection with  the  group  save  that  of  an  effective  preface. 
It  is  a  challenge  of  attention,  and  as  such  forms  a  fitting 
introduction  to  the  entire  collection  of  parables.  As 
such  let  us  study  it  carefully. 

We  call  our  parable  "The  Parable  of  the  Sower,"  be- 
cause it  is  so  named  by  the  Master  himself  from  its 
opening  words.  Named  from  its  subject,  it  would  be 
"The  Parable  of  the  Soil."    This  title  would  call  atten- 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

tion  directly  to  its  central  thought.  So  far  as  the  story 
is  concerned,  the  sower  and  the  seed  are  mere  adjuncts 
of  the  field.  They  were  made  for  the  soil,  not  the  soil 
for  them.  The  artist  who  attempts  to  represent  this 
parable  by  a  picture  in  which  the  principal  figure  is  that 
of  a  man  sowing  seed,  plainly  misinterprets  the  story. 
The  soil  is  the  object  of  chief  importance  and  emphasis — 
the  soil  and  its  influence  upon  the  harvest.  The  four- 
fold division  represents  but  one  truth,  viz..  Other  things 
being  equal,  the  growth  and  fruitfulness  of  seeds  will  be 
determined  by  the  nature  of  the  soil  upon  which  they 
are  cast. 

This  is  a  simple  law  of  nature  which  holds  good  always 
and  everywhere ;  and  it  illustrates  a  higher  and  more 
important  law  of  human  life.  Nay,  rather,  it  is  identi- 
cal with  that  higher  law;  for  law  is  one  in  all 
spheres.  Expressing  the  law  in  terms  of  the  spiritual 
life  we  say,  The  effect  of  truth  upon  the  life  is  deter- 
mined by  the  condition  of  the  heart  into  which  it  falls. 

In  other  words,  the  character  of  the  hearer  and  his 
state  of  mind  determine  the  results  of  his  hearing. 
What  a  man  receives  from  any  truth  that  he  hears  or 
reads  depends  upon  what  he  brings  to  that  truth.  What 
we  receive  from  the  gospel  itself  depends  upon  what  we 
bring  to  the  gospel. 

The  parable  addresses  us  as  hearers — ^liearers  of  the 
gospel,  and  it  addresses  all.  It  is  not  a  parable  for  one 
class  as  distinguished  from  others.  Jesus  did  not  di- 
vide his  audience  into  sections,  after  the  manner  of  the 
modern  political  orator,  and  address  each  class  sepa- 
rately. We  cannot  say  that  one  lesson  is  for  the  pulpit 
and  another  for  the  pew,  one  for  the  saint  and  another 
for  the  sinner.  Every  Christian  is  both  a  hearer  and  a 
preacher  of  the  gospel.  We  are  all  saints  to  the  very 
limited  measure  of  our  spiritual  attainments ;  and  we  are 
all  sinners  to  the  very  large  measure  of  our  shortcom- 
ing's.   Each  of    us,  therefore,  may  receive    the    whole 


THE SOWER 

gospel  for  himself,  and  may  look  for  its  application  to  his 
own  life.  I  repeat,  then:  The  parable  addresses  all  of 
us  in  our  capacity  of  hearers  of  the  gospel.  And  there 
is  no  one  so  wise,  no  saint  so  perfect  in  sainthood,  that 
he  has  outgrown  the  necessity  of  hearing  the  word  of 
God.  Again  and  again  the  truth  has  been  presented  to 
us,  till  we  sometimes  fancy  that  we  know  it  by  heart  and 
have  exhausted  its  meaning.  We  wonder  if  there  can 
be  any  profit  in  hstening  any  longer.  Still  there  comes 
to  us  this  warning,  "Take  heed  therefore  how  ye  hear" ! 

Has  some  truth  fallen  on  your  ears  hundreds  of  times  ? 
You  may  hear  it  hundreds  of  times  more,  and  it  may  bear 
new  fruit  each  time  if  you  hear  it  aright.  The  great 
need  of  the  world  is  not  so  much  new  truth  as  a  new 
hearing  of  old  truth  that  shall  make  it  more  fruitful. 
You  say  you  have  heard  the  gospel  till  you  know  it  by 
heart.  Very  good.  But  has  the  gospel  become  so  thor- 
oughly written  into  your  life  that  everybody  can  read  it 
there?  "The  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love,  joy,  peace, 
longsufifering,  kindness,  goodness,  faithfulness,  meek- 
ness, self-control."  Are  all  these  fruits  fully  matured 
and  ripened  in  your  character?  If  not,  you  have  need  to 
hear  the  same  old  truth  many  times  more ;  for  they 
spring  from  no  other  seed  than  the  gospel  that  you  have 
heard  from  childhood,  falling  into  a  heart  ready  to  re- 
ceive it.  Even  this  most  familiar  of  all  parables  may 
bring  a  fresh  blessing  to  him  who  comes  to  it  with  fresh 
interest  and  desire. 

Having  read  the  parable,  let  us  question  it. 

What  of  the  person  and  character  of  the  sower? 
Nothing.  What  of  the  quality  and  nature  of  the  seed? 
Again,  nothing.  In  their  place  these  are  most  important 
matters.  But  they  are  out  of  place  when  we  are  consider- 
ing our  duties  as  hearers.  We  are  concerned  with  the 
message,  not  with  the  messenger.  And  in  dealing  with 
the  message,  our  duty  is  not  to  question  its  truthful- 
ness, but  to  get  the  truth  out  of  it;  not  to  measure  its 


Q 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

value  in  the  abstract,  but  to  get  as  much  concrete  value 
out  of  it  as  we  can.  The  Pharisees  were  so  disturbed 
about  the  "authority"  of  Jesus,  the  messenger,  that  they 
lost  the  good  they  might  have  received  from  his  messages. 
A  great  deal  of  truth  becomes  fruitless  for  us  because 
we  are  prejudiced  against  him  who  utters  it,  or  because 
we  do  not  like  the  form  in  which  it  comes  to  us.  There 
is  wisdom  in  the  advice  of  an  old  Scotch  preacher,  "Be 
willing  to  receive  truth  even  from  the  devil,  if  he 
chances  to  utter  any."  If  our  lives  are  to  be  fruitful  we 
must  receive  all  truth  without  prejudice  and  without 
criticism. 

The  falling  of  the  seed  on  all  kinds  of  soil  is  taken 
for  granted.  In  no  case  is  lack  of  fruitage  attributed 
to  want  of  seed.  The  seed  was  abundant  and  good.  So 
in  all  our  lives.  If  you  and  I  fall  short  of  the  true  stand- 
ard of  character,  if  we  fail  to  manifest  the  Christian 
graces,  if  our  lives  are  not  fruitful  in  the  largest  and 
best  sense,  it  is  never  from  a  lack  of  truth.  However  lim- 
ited our  opportunities  may  be,  however  imperfect  the 
presentations  of  truth  to  which  we  listen,  truth  enough 
has  fallen  upon  every  soul  to  make  it  noi)le  and  saintly 
and  grand  if  only  the  truth  were  rightly  received  and 
obeyed.  More  than  this :  the  seed  scattered  from  the 
hand  of  a  thoughtless  child  will  grow  as  readily  and 
will  produce  as  much  fruit  as  the  seed  sown  by  an  ex- 
perienced farmer.  So  the  truth  that  we  receive  from 
the  most  unskilful  and  ignorant  of  teachers  may  prove 
unexpectedly  precious  and  helpful  to  our  lives. 

When  we  Christians  go  away  from  God's  house  com- 
plaining, as  we  so  often  do,  that  we  have  received  no  bene- 
fit from  our  worship,  that  the  message  has  been  without 
value  to  us,  might  it  not  be  well  to  ask  ourselves  wheth- 
er the  fault  was  wholly  with  the  messenger  and  his  mes- 
sage, or  whether  it  was  with  our  own  hearts  and  with 
the  manner  and  spirit  of  our  hearing.  It  is  said  that  a 
French  cook  will  make  an  appetizing    and    nourishing 


THE SOWER 

meal  from  scraps  of  food  that  others  would  throw  away 
as  useless.  Not  less  true  is  it  that  a  really  earnest  hearer 
will  find  a  blessing  in  a  service  that  fills  less  earnest 
hearts  with  contempt  or  excites  in  them  a  sense  of 
ridicule. 

How  large  a  proportion  of  even  Christian  people 
come  to  the  services  of  God's  house  with  their  minds 
wholly  fixed  on  what  they  shall  see  and  hear,  utterly 
forgetful  of  their  own  condition  and  fitness  to  receive! 
In  fact,  if  they  think  about  it  at  all,  they  expect  first  to 
be  brought  into  a  receptive  mood  and  then  to  be  filled. 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  they  go  away  many  times  unsatis- 
fied? Any  wonder  that  the  word  to  which  they  listen 
brings  forth  no  fruit  in  their  lives?  If,  instead  of  this, 
all  came  to  the  sanctuary  with  an  earnest  purpose  and  a 
definite  desire,  if  every  heart  were  open  and  every  ear 
attentive,  if  upon  every  lip  were  a  prayer  for  the  teach- 
ing of  God's  Spirit,  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  would  be 
vastly  more  fruitful  than  it  is.  No  soul  was  ever  yet 
lost  for  want  of  truth.  No  life  was  ever  left  barren 
because  it  lacked  the  good  seed.  No;  if  souls  are  lost, 
if  lives  are  fruitless,  it  is  because  they  have  not  received 
the  truth  that  has  been  offered  them  and  made  the  most  of  it . 

The  seed  being  abundant  and  good,  the  soil  deter- 
mines its  fruitfulness.  Even  so  the  heart  of  the  hearer 
determines  the  value  of  the  truth  heard.  Four  kinds  of 
soil  catch  the  seed  as  it  falls  from  the  hand  of  the  sower. 
Four  diverse  conditions  of  mind  and  heart  must  be 
reckoned  with  in  estimating  the  effect  of  truth.  Hence 
we  have  four  lines  of  illustration  which  converge  upon 
the  single  thought,  the  paramount  importance  of  hear- 
ing aright. 

(a)  "Some  seeds  fell  by  the  way  side."  The  ground 
is  hard  trodden  by  much  passing,  and  they  do  not  sink 
into  it.  They  merely  lie  upon  the  surface  to  be  picked 
up  by  the  birds. 

There  is  the  wayside  mind.     It  "heafeth  the  word  of 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

the  kingdom,  and  understandeth  it  not."  The  truth  falls 
upon  the  surface  merely.  It  finds  no  lodgment.  A  child 
listens  to  a  lecture  by  some  profound  scientist,  and  how 
much  does  he  get  from  it?  Nothing  at  all.  He  hears  the 
words,  but  they  are  meaningless  to  him.  They  fall  upon 
his  ear  and  are  quickly  forgotten.  Or  one  who  has  no 
musical  training  or  taste  hears  a  grand  oratorio,  but 
its  grandeur  fails  to  impress  him.  He  does  not  com- 
prehend it.  The  music  falls  on  the  outside  of  him,  as  it 
were ;  it  finds  no  entrance  into  his  soul. 

"Understandeth  it  not."  Whose  fault  is  it?  Are  we 
responsible  for  our  failure  to  understand  truth?  In 
many  cases  we  are;  for  our  failure  frequently  results 
from  inattention,  unwillingness,  want  of  candor,  rather 
than  from  any  real  incapacity.  We  hear  one  thing  while 
we  are  thinking  of  another.  We  are  not  ready  to  yield 
our  lives  to  the  leadings  of  the  truth.  We  are  preju- 
diced against  the  speaker  or  the  message  or  both  and  do 
not  give  the  truth  fair  consideration. 

The  path  was  not  always  hard ;  remember  that.  Once 
it  was  mellow  like  the  rest  of  the  field,  but  it  has  been 
trodden  hard  by  much  travel.  Hearts  are  hardened  by 
repeatedly  hearing  and  not  doing  the  truth.  Says  Rus- 
kin,  "Every  duty  we  omit  obscures  some  truth  we  might 
have  known."  This  is  what  is  meant  by  being  "gospel- 
hardened." 

All  gospel  truth  is  practical.  God  does  not  pro- 
pound to  men  certain  theories  to  be  discussed,  certain 
principles  to  be  admired,  certain  abstract  propositions 
to  be  received  and  revolved  in  the  mind  like  so  many 
theorems  in  geometry  or  arguments  in  mental  phil- 
osophy. His  word  is  not  designed  simply  to  instruct  or 
interest  or  amuse,  but  to  affect  the  life,  to  produce  a 
radical  change  of  motive  and  conduct.  It  reveals  duties 
to  be  done,  commands  to  be  obeyed,  promises  to  be  ac- 
cepted and  fulfilled.  And  the  value  of  that  word  to  each 
one  lies  in  its  direct  and  practical  application  to  the  in- 


THE SOWER 

dividual  life.  If  we  continually  hear  such  truth  without 
putting  it  into  practise,  we  grow  indifferent  alike  to 
command  and  promise,  conscience  loses  its  keenness, 
and  our  moral  and  spiritual  development  is  retarded. 
The  truth  we  ought  to  understand  without  difficulty 
becomes  meaningless  to  us.  It  falls  on  our  ears,  but 
finds  no  lodgment  in  our  hearts  and  bears  no  fruit  in  our 
characters.  Is  not  this  the  supreme  peril  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  churchgoer? 

(b)  "Others  fell  upon  the  rocky  places."  The  thin 
layer  of  earth  upon  some  broad  ledge  is  soft  and  warm 
and  the  seed  quickly  springs  up  and  as  quickly  withers. 
Such  are  we  when  we  keep  our  minds  open  and  atten- 
tivCj  but  our  hearts  hard  closed  beneath.  It  is  one  thing, 
to  receive  truth  with  the  mind,  quite  another  to  receive 
iV  with  the  heart.  It  is  one  thing  to  be  orthodox, 
another  thing  to  be  holy.  And  the  fruit  of  truth  is  holi- 
ness. 

Any  intelligent  mind  must  receive  truth  with  joy. 
Even  the  criminal  can  admire  lofty  ideals  and  pure  mo- 
tives. One  cannot  hear  and  understand  the  gospel 
without  approving  it.  Yet  how  many  persons  imagine 
that  there  is  something  meritorious  in  the  mere  intel- 
lectual assent  to  truth  !  How  many  expect  to  be  admitted 
to  heaven  on  the  ground  of  the  truth  they  have  known 
and  admired,  though  they  never  practised  it ! 

Now,  truth  to  be  fruitful  must  sink  deeper  than  the 
mind.  It  must  become  rooted  in  the  soul.  It  must 
strike  deep  down  into  the  heart.  Truth  received  in  the 
mind  springs  up.  There  is  a  larger  intelligence,  a  greater 
breadth  of  thought.  The  outward  appearance  of  the 
life  is  more  pleasing  for  having  thus  received  the  truth. 
But  when  that  truth  comes  in  contact  with  daily  duty, 
when  it  threatens  to  cross  selfish  pleasure,  when  it  stands 
between  us  and  success,  when  it  calls  for  some  unwel- 
come service,  then  we  too  often  repudiate  its  claim.  It 
is  easy  to  be  a  Christian  in  theory,  to  accept  God's  truth 


@ 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

into  our  minds,  to  discuss  lofty  themes,  to  admire  per- 
fect ideals,  to  extol  saintly  character.  But  to  let  that  truth 
into  our  hearts,  to  take  the  perfect  ideals  as  our  standard 
of  daily  life,  to  square  all  our  conduct  by  them,  to  strive 
for  the  attainment  of  saintly  character  in  ourselves — that 
is  not  so  easy.  Yet  until  we  do  this,  the  truth  we  hear 
is  fruitless  and  without  value  for  us.  "The  important 
question  regarding  every  man  is  not,  How  much  truth 
does  he  put  into  his  creed?  but.  How  much  truth  does 
he  pat  into  his  life?" 

(c)  "Others  fell  upon  the  thorns."  There  may  be 
good  soil,  but  it  is  preoccupied.  The  seed  is  choked 
and  dies.  That  is  your  case,  it  is  mine,  when  we  allow 
the  cares  of  the  world  and  the  eager  pursuit  of  riches 
to  crowd  God's  truth  from  our  minds  and  hearts.  The 
conventional  interpretation  of  covetousness  and  world- 
ly anxiety  comes  at  once  to  every  mind.  There  is,  how- 
ever, another  interpretation,  less  obvious  perhaps,  but 
not  less  important. 

"Thorns'^  stand  for  any  kind  of  weed  that  chokes  out 
the  desired  crop.  Corn  is  a  weed  if  it  grows  in  a  wheat- 
field.  The  blackberry  is  only  a  troublesome  thorn  if  it 
springs  up  in  the  midst  of  a  flower  bed.  So  the  most 
innocent  occupations  and  even  praiseworthy  actions  may 
become  harmful  if  allowed  to  crowd  vital  truth  from 
our  lives. 

To  be  diligent  in  business  is  commendable  in  general. 
But  when  we  become  so  completely  absorbed  in  busi- 
ness that  we  can  think  of  nothing  else  or  do  nothing 
else,  when  we  permit  the  cares  and  plans  of  the  week- 
day to  invade  the  hallowed  Sabbath,  when  our  minds 
are  so  fully  occupied  with  our  toil  that  we  cannot  attend 
to  God's  truth,  then  our  very  diligence  becomes  a  vice. 
Many  pleasures,  too,  are  innocent  till  they  interfere 
with  duty  and  hinder  our  obedience  to  higher  truth ;  then 
they  are  no  longer  innocent ;  they  are  thorns  and  weeds. 
The  very  forms  and  services  of  religion,  if  they  keep 

10 


THE SOWER 

us  back  from  the  performance  of  less  congenial  duty, 
may  become  thorns.  We  really  have  less  to  fear  in 
these  days  from  the  positively  evil  than  from  the  multi- 
tude of  good  things  that  overcrowd  our  lives.  As  Pres- 
ident Hyde  has  said,  "The  worst  enemy  of  the  best  is  the 
good."  The  old  proverb,  "Of  two  evils  choose  the  less," 
is  out  of  date.  To-day  the  exhortation  must  run,  "Of 
two  good  things  always  choose  the  better."  Whatever 
it  is  that  comes  into  the  mind  or  heart  and  prevents  us 
from  hearing  and  obeying  the  voice  of  duty,  is  a  thorn. 

Each  human  life  is  a  field  of  limited  area.  No  one 
life  can  contain  everything.  Among  many  good  things 
we  must  be  continually  choosing  the  best.  We  must  ask 
concerning  every  claim  that  is  presented  to  us,  not 
merely,  "Is  this  good  in  itself?"  but,  "Is  this  the  very 
best  thing  to  which  I  can  give  my  life  just  now?"  We 
must  choose  between  pleasure  and  profit,  even  when  the 
pleasure  is  the  best  and  most  innocent.  We  must  choose 
between  indulgence  and  service.  We  must  choose  be- 
tween inclination  and  duty.  In  short,  we  must  be  ever 
ready  to  put  aside  from  our  lives  the  most  pleasing  and 
harmless  occupations  to  make  way  for  the  reception  and 
growth  of  highest  truth.  The  fruit  of  to-'day  will  become 
the  thorns  of  to-morrow,  if  we  do  not  constantly  make 
room  for  the  sowing  and  fruitage  of  better  seed. 

(d)  "Others  fell  upon  the  good  ground."  There  are 
good  hearers  of  truth.  Their  minds  are  attentive. 
Their  hearts  are  open.  The  word  sinks  deep.  It  lays 
hold  of  the  very  springs  of  life  and  action.  And  so 
the  truth  becomes  fruitful  in  transformed  life  and  ex- 
alted character,  in   Christian  graces,   in  noble   service. 

Who  are  the  good  ground  hearers?  All  may  be  such 
who  will.  The  possibilities  of  change  in  the  soil  are 
limited.  Not  so  is  it  with  human  hearts.  We  may  make 
ourselves  what  we  choose  in  this  matter.  As  careless 
hearing  hardens  the  heart,  thoughtful  hearing  softens 
it  and  fits  it  for  fruit-bearing. 

11 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

Three  qualities  characterize  the  good  hearer.  They 
are:  i,  attention;  2,  sincerity;  3,  obedience. 

First,  attention.  I  beUeve  it  is  Lowell  who  says,  "At- 
tention is  the  stuff  that  memory  is  made  of ;  and  memory 
is  accumulated  genius."  We  may  go  farther  and  say  that 
the  memory  of  divine  truth  is  accumulated  blessing. 
The  habit  of  attention,  which  lies  back  of  all,  may  be 
cultivated. 

Second,  sincerity.  If  attention  is  to  be  of  value  it 
must  be  supplemented  by  sincerity.  The  truth  must  be 
received  into  "an  honest  and  good  heart."  Personal  feel- 
ing, prejudice,  self-interest,  must  not  distort  its  appli- 
cation nor  cause  its  purpose  to  miscarry. 

Third,  obedience.  This  is  most  important  of  all.  The 
truth  must  be  obeyed.  It  is  truth  obeyed  that  transforms 
the  life,  that  redeems  the  world.  It  is  not  the  preaching 
of  the  gospel,  nor  the  hearing  of  the  gospel,  but  the 
practise  of  the  gospel^  that  blesses  mankind.  The  great 
need  of  the  world  to-day  as  always  is  the  need  of  applied 
Christianity,  of  the  gospel  revealing  itself  in  our  daily 
life  and  in  all  the  relations  of  mankind. 

Attention,  sincerity,  obedience,  these  are  all  volun- 
tary attitudes  of  the  intelligent  mind.  They  are  condi- 
tions for  the  fulfilment  of  which  every  individual  is 
directly  responsible.  To  hear  aright  is  a  universal  priv- 
ilege, a  universal  duty. 

The  result  of  right  hearing  is  assured.  "It  brought 
forth  fruit,  some  an  hundredfold,  some  sixtyfold,  and 
some  thirtyfold."  What  is  the  fruit  of  truth?  Knowl- 
edge? culture?  enlightenment?  No.  These  accompany 
the  fruit.  They  lend  beauty  and  attractiveness  to  the 
growing  plant,  but,  after  all,  they  are  only  the  leaves. 
The  fruit  is  character.  The  truth  that  informs  but  does 
not  transform  is  of  little  value.  The  truth  that  works 
upon  the  mind  alone,  while  it  fails  to  reach  the  heart 
and  life,  has  not  accomplished  its  mission. 

12 


THE SOWER 

Some  of  the  most  godless  characters  of  history  have 
been  men  and  women  who  prided  themselves  in  their 
knowledge  and  appreciation  of  divine  truth.  Like  the 
Pharisees  of  old,  they  had  received  it  into  their  minds, 
but  it  had  exerted  no  influence  upon  their  lives.  And 
many  of  those  who  to-day  block  the  wheels  of  human 
progress  and  hinder  the  redemption  of  society  are  men 
whose  lives  are  beautiful  with  the  foliage  of  Christian 
enlightenment — refined,  educated,  polite,  pious — but 
who  are  wholly  wanting  in  the  spirit  of  brotherly  love 
and  self-sacrifice. 

Now  let  us  glance  once  more  at  the  parable.  We 
have  dissected  it;  let  us  gather  its  parts  together  again. 
Let  us  think  of  it  for  a  moment  as  a  complete  unit,  a 
living  organism. 

Do  we  not  almost  invariably  think  of  this  picture  as 
representing  four  distinct  persons  or  classes  of  persons? 
And  does  it  not  follow  in  our  thinking  that  only  one 
section  of  the  parable  can  possibly  apply  to  ourselves? 
And  so  we  throw  away  three-fourths  *of  it  as  having 
nothing  for  us.     Fortunate  if  we  keep  even  one-fourth ! 

Ah!  take  heed  how  ye  hear!  The  whole  parable  was 
spoken  for  you.  It  represents  four  possible  conditions 
of  your  mind  and  heart.  Hence  every  part  of  it  speaks 
directly  to  your  soul. 

Who  is  the  wayside  hearer?  Thou  art  the  man. 
Have  you  never  lost  truth  through  inattention,  or  un- 
willingness, or  want  of  obedience? 

Who  is  the  rocky  ground  hearer?  Thou  art  the  man. 
Your  grasp  of  truth  is  sometimes  shallow.  You  receive 
truth  many  times  into  your  mind  to  which  you  do  not 
open  your  heart. 

Who  is  represented  by  the  thorny  ground?  Thou  art 
the  man.  Is  not  your  life  oftentimes  preoccupied  with 
other  things,  so  that  the  truth  you  hear  is  choked  before 
it  comes  to  fruitage?  Do  you  never  allow  business,  or 
study  or  pleasure  or  politics  to  fill  the  place  in  your 

13 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

heart  that  ought  to  be  kept  clear  for  the  cultivation  of 
character  and  the  direct  service  of  God? 

Who  receives  seed  in  the  good  ground?  Again,  thou 
art  the  man,  if  thou  dost  choose.  For  such  receiving 
is  in  the  power  of  every  hearer.  You  can  attend.  You 
can  treat  the  truth  with  candor.  You  can  obey  it.  And 
so  you  can  make  it  fruitful  in  your  life. 

Seeds  of  truth  fall  daily  upon  every  life.  In  them  lie 
the  germs  of  character.  Their  legitimate  fruit  is  en- 
nobled manhood  and  womanhood.  All  the  graces  and 
attributes  of  perfect  humanity  must  spring  from  them. 
These  cannot  be  found  elsewhere.  If  you  and  I  fall  be- 
low the  true  standard,  it  is  not  for  want  of  truth,  but 
because  we  do  not  hear  the  truth  aright. 

On  every  hand  is  the  voice  of  God,  yet  we  often  com- 
plain that  we  do  not  hear  it.  We  excuse  our  small  at- 
•  tainments  on  the  ground  of  lack  of  privilege.  But  how 
many  saints  have  developed  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  from 
a  much  more  scanty  sowing!  Jacob  heard  the  voice  of 
God  in  a  dream,  and  he  became  the  noblest  character  of 
his  age.  David  heard  the  voice  of  God  amid  the  din  of 
war  and  the  roaring  of  the  storm,  and  the  portrait  of 
his  sainthood  is  given  us  in  the  Psalms.  Elijah  heard 
the  voice  of  God  in  the  quiet  whisperings  of  conscience, 
and  it  brought  forth  the  fruit  of  immortal  heroism.  Saul 
of  Tarsus  heard  the  voice  of  God  in  the  thunder  and  was 
transformed  from  a  persecuting  Pharisee  into  a  Chris- 
tian saint.  Martin  Luther  heard  the  voice  of  God  in  a 
flash  of  memory,  and  it  was  the  turning-point  in  his 
career  and  character. 

The  same  voice  speaks  to  you.  Have  not  you  and  I 
more  and  higher  truth  revealed  to  us  than  any  of  these 
enjoyed?  If,  then,  we  fall  short  of  their  attainments, 
who  is  responsible  for  our  f ruitlessness  ?  The  seed  is 
abundant  and  good.  The  soil,  the  soil,  the  trouble  is 
with  that.    Take  heed  how  ye  hear! 


14 


The  Vitality 
of  Character 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Vitality  of 
Character 

THE   GROWING   SEED 

Mark  4:26-29 

Text.— 'TA*  earth  beareth  fruit  of  herself  "—Mark  4:28 

OUR  life  is  twofold.  It  is  made  up  of  ele- 
ments human  and  divine.  These  must  work 
together  for  all  really  valuable  results. 
Hence  the  gospel  is  twofold  in  its  appeal. 
Its  truth  adapts  itself  to  both  sides  of  our 
dual  nature.  Its  teaching  recognizes  the  necessary  har- 
mony and  interplay  of  the  two  elements  in  the  attain- 
ment of  the  perfect  life. 

The  Christian  life,  then,  is  a  composite  result  ot  hu- 
man and  divine  forces  working  together.  This  fact  it 
is  which  gave  birth  to  the  parable  of  "The  Growing 
Seed,"  as  a  companion  piece  to  the  parable  of  "The 
Sower." 

The  parable  of  "The  Sower"  unfolds  the  truth  as  it 
applies  to  the  human  side  of  life,  i.  e.,  to  duty.  "The 
preparations  of  the  heart  belong  to  man."  Repentance, 
conversion,  concentrated  activity;  these  are  our  part  in 
the  work  of  salvation.  These  are  things  which  we 
must  do  and  which  God  cannot  do  for  us.  We  are  di- 
rectly and  solely  responsible  for  hearing  truth  aright 
and  acting  upon  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  salvation 
which  results  from  these  is  the  gift  of  God.  Regenera- 
tion, sanctification,  growth  in  grace ;  these  are  wholly  of 

17 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

God.  They  are  the  response  of  divine  love  to  our  human 
obedience  and  desire.  The  results  which  the  gospel 
seeks  are  stupendous;  yet  the  duties  which  it  lays  upon 
men  are  simple  and  easy  of  accomplishment.  Attention, 
obedience,  service,  devotion  on  our  part,  and  then  a  quiet 
trusting  in  God  for  the  rest.  "Follow  me" ;  that  is  the 
challenge  of  human  obedience.  "I  will  make  you  fishers 
of  men"  (or  whatsoever  else  you  ought  to  be) ;  that  is 
the  promise  of  divine  assistance;  commonplace  acts  of 
duty  by  the  disciple;  miracles  of  power  and  achieve- 
ment by  the  Master. 

The  parable  of  "The  Sower"  is  preliminary.  This 
parable  introduces  us  directly  to  the  central  theme  of 
Jesus*  teaching— "The  Kingdom  of  God"  or  "The  King- 
dom of  Heaven." 

Pardon  a  brief  definition^  since  this  is  the  common 
theme  of  a  large  number  of  parables,  and  our  interpre- 
tation of  the  entire  group  depends  on  our  understand- 
ing of  this  phrase.  What  does  Jesus  mean  when  he 
uses  the  phrase  "kingdom  of  God"  or  "kingdom  of 
heaven"?  Does  he  refer  to  the  Christian  Church,  which 
was  so  soon  to  be  organized?  Clearly  not;  for  the 
Church  is  an  external  organization,  whereas  he  says, 
"The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you."  Does  he  then 
look  forward  to  the  conditions  of  a  future  life  in  another 
world?  No;  for  that  would  imply  a  perfect  order  of 
things,  and  the  parable  of  "The  Tares  among  the 
Wheat"  proclaims  the  imperfect  conditions  of  earth. 

We  shall  look  far  before  we  find  a  better  definition 
than  that  given  by  St.  Paul,  "The  kingdom  of  God 
is  .  .  .  righteousness  and  peace  and  joy  in  the  Holy 
Spirit."  In  a  word,  the  kingdom  of  God  is  character, 
godly  character  revealing  itself  in  every  relation  of 
earth,  godly  character  incarnate  in  human  lives  and  be- 
coming more  and  more  widely  incarnate  in  universal 
humanity.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you ;  it  is  with- 
in all  men  to  the  extent  of  the  common  development  of 

18 


THE        GROWING         SEED 

the  godly  character.  Its  consummation  is  a  redeemed 
world  "wherein  dwelleth  righteousness,"  a  race  in  which 
the  divine  character  is  perfectly  restored. 

This  definition  calls  for  neither  argument  nor  expan- 
sion. It  claims  no  other  authority  than  its  self-evident 
truthfulness.  It  is  sufficient  to  test  it  by  its  adaptability 
to  the  conditions  of  each  of  the  succeeding  parables. 

Starting  from  this  definition  we  see  in  the  parable  be- 
fore us  a  picture  of  The  Vitality  of  Godly  Character. 
It  unfolds  the  principles  of  spiritual  growth,  the  mode  of 
spiritual  attainment.  And  this  is  what  it  tells  us:  godly 
character  is  not  a  mechanical  production ;  it  is  a  man- 
ifestation of  life.  It  cannot  be  fashioned  by  human 
hands,  it  cannot  be  created  by  human  ingenuity  or  effort, 
but  is  the  immediate  product  of  the  divine  efficiency. 
There  are  certain  things  which  we  can  do  and  which 
we  must  do  in  connection  with  the  process.  We  must 
keep  our  hearts  continually  open  to  the  influence  of  truth 
and  must  scatter  truth  diligently  upon  other  hearts. 
We  must  keep  the  spiritual  soil  in  good  condition  and 
court  the  sunshine  of  God's  presence  and  the  showers 
of  his  blessing.  But  when  this  has  been  done  diligently 
and  faithfully  we  must  leave  the  results  with  him,  as- 
sured that  in  due  time  we  shall  reap  as  we  have  sown. 
Every  growing  plant  of  the  summer  time  is  a  silent  wit- 
ness to  the  power  and  willingness  of  God  to  carry  on 
these  marvelous  vital  processes  if  we  but  make  the  simple 
adjustments  of  nature  which  are  within  our  reach. 

So  much  for  the  general  sweep  of  the  parable.  Now, 
what  of  its  particular  teaching?  What  do  we  find  as 
we  note  its  consecutive  details?  At  least  four  distinct 
thoughts  discover  themselves  to  our  search.  They  are 
these : 

(a)  The  vital  process  is  slow.  It  is  a  gradual  process. 
He  "should  sleep  and  rise  night  and  day,  and  the  seed 
should  spring  up  and  grow." 

19 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

(b)  The  vital  process  is  secret.  It  is  enshrouded  in 
mystery.     It  should  "grow,  he  knoweth  not  how." 

(c)  The  vital  process  is  spontaneous.  It  is  not  some- 
thing done  from  without,  but  is  the  direct  product  of  an 
indwelling  force.    "The  earth  beareth  fruit  of  herself." 

(d)  The  vital  process  is  sure.  It  is  the  fulfilment  of 
a  regular  and  eternal  law.  "First  the  blade,  then  the 
ear,  after  that  the  full  corn  in  the  ear." 

First,  I  say,  the  parable  suggests  the  slowness  of  the 
vital  process.  The  development  of  life  is  always  grad- 
ual and  imperceptible.  We  sometimes  say  of  a  plant 
that  we  can  see  it  grow ;  but  that  is  mere  hyperbole. 
The  seed  is  sown,  and  for  days  it  lies  hidden  in  the 
ground.  It  is  moistened  by  showers  and  warmed  by  the 
sun,  and,  at  length,  a  tiny  shoot  appears.  In  course  of 
time  we  shall  see  a  full-grown  plant  and  ripened  ears  of 
grain.  Yet  we  can  scarcely  say  how  or  when  this  great 
change  has  taken  place.  As  we  have  watched  it  from 
day  to  day  we  have  observed  no  sudden  or  marked  tran- 
sitions. There  has  been  no  perceptible  movement.  The 
expansion  has  not  been  discernible  by  human  eyes.  The 
plant  seems  no  larger  to-day  than  yesterday.  But  when 
we  note  the  growth  of  weeks  or  months  we  see  a  grad- 
ual progress  through  all  the  stages  of  advancing 
maturity. 

Slow  and  gradual  also  is  the  growth  of  character; 
for  character  is  a  living  thing;  it  is  a  spiritual  organism. 
There  is  no  instantaneous  perfection.  The  Scriptures 
do  not  reveal  any  short  cut  to  mature  sainthood.  If 
they  did  so  we  should  doubt  their  truthfulness  and  value. 
We  must  grow  in  spiritual  experience  and  knowledge 
and  power  as  we  grow  in  physical  stature  and  strength, 
as  the  plant  grows  from  its  seed — by  a  process  so  grad- 
ual that  its  working  eludes  observation,  but  so  real  and 
so  constant  that  its  stages  are  manifest  to  all.  Doubtless 
there  will  be  periods  of  unusually  rapid  soul  growth, 
periods  when  we  are  conscious  of  making  great  progress 

20 


THE        GROWING         SEED 

in  the  divine  life,  just  as  boys  and  girls  grow  much 
faster  at  one  time  than  at  another,  or  as  plants  develop 
with  redoubled  quickness  under  the  influence  of  the  early 
summer  rains.  Yet,  after  all,  spiritual  growth  must  be 
step  by  step  through  all  the  regular  gradations  of  expe- 
rience, which  are  in  essence  the  same  for  all  disciples.  We 
must  add  to  faith  virtue,  and  to  virtue  knowledge,  and  to 
knowledge  temperance,  and  to  temperance  patience,  and 
so  on  to  the  end  of  the  catalogue.  We  can  neither  omit 
any  stage  of  the  vital  process  nor  slight  any  experience 
that  comes  to  us  in  the  way.  And  we  must  remember  that 
even  the  time  element  is  essential  to  perfect  maturity. 

We  are  often  impatient  at  this  gradual  process.  We 
wish  to  attain  to  the  fulness  of  the  stature  of  Christ  at 
a  bound,  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  victory  without  first  endur- 
ing the  hardships  of  the  protracted  struggle.  We  wish, 
in  other  words,  to  reap  the  full  corn  within  a  few  days 
or  even  a  few  hours  of  the  seed-sowing.  Could  anything 
be  more  absurd  or  unreasonable?  An  Oriental  juggler 
will  plant  a  seed  in  the  earth  in  the  presence  of  an  audi- 
ence and  will  apparently  cause  it  to  sprout  and  a  plant 
to  grow  up  and  mature  in  a  few  minutes ;  but  everybody 
knows  that  it  is  mere  jugglery,  that  there  has  been  no 
real  growth  there.  How  does  he  accomplish  the  feat? 
That  I  cannot  answer.  I  only  know  that  there  is  some 
deception  about  it.  He  never  performs  the  feat  in  his 
garden,  but  only  on  the  stage. 

So  any  fancied  spiritual  growth  that  occurs  in  a  few 
moments  is  a  deception.  The  doctrine  of  instan- 
taneous perfection  is  spiritual  jugglery.  Conversion  is 
instantaneous,  never  otherwise.  Sanctification  may  be 
instantaneous;  I  will  not  dogmatize  about  that.  But 
development,  growth — that  is  always  gradual. 

Character,  as  the  product  of  growth,  is  of  slow  attain- 
ment. It  demands  a  lifetime  for  its  ripening.  Our 
noblest  characters  have  been  the  fruitage  of  many  gen- 
erations of  consecration  and  earnest  aspiration.     Oliver 

21 


y 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

Wendell  Holmes'  advice  has  passed  into  a  proverb,  "Be- 
gin the  training  of  a  child  a  hundred  years  before  he  is 
born !"  Heredity  is  an  important  factor  in  the  formation 
of  character.  But  since  we  must  begin  with  that,  whether 
good  or  bad,  we  are  chiefly  concerned  with  the  years  be- 
tween birth  and  death,  and  they  all  count.  Jesus'  ideal  is 
that  gradual  but  steady  development  of  spiritual  power 
and  grace,  that  daily  expansion  of  soul,  that  reveals  itself 
to  the  world  in  added  virtues  and  increasing  usefulness. 
Such  growth,  though  at  times  it  may  try  the  patience  and 
test  the  courage  of  the  disciple,  will  be  permanent  and 
abundantly  fruitful. 

In  the  second  place,  our  parable  suggests  the  truth  that 
the  vital  process  is  secret  or  mysterious.    Watch  it  close- 
ly as  we  will,  it  eludes  our  investigation.    We  cannot  un- 
derstand it.     In  its  simplest  manifestations  it  infinitely 
transcends  the  most  profound  work  of  man.     Here,  for 
example,  is  a  magnificent  temple  in  process  of  erection. 
We  both  see  and  understand  the  method  of  work  by 
which  its  massive  towers  and  arched  roof  are  brought  to 
gradual  completion.     Or,  here  again  is  a  delicately  con- 
structed watch  whose  hands  move  so  slowly  as  they  mark 
off  the  hours  that  we  cannot  see  their  motion ;  yet  we  can 
trace  that  motion  backward  through  systems  of  wheels 
till  it  becomes  quite  perceptible  and  its  rate  easily  cal- 
culated.    That  is  dead  mechanics.    But  the  growth,  the 
vital  development  of  the  most  commonplace  weed  is  ut- 
terly beyond  our  ken.    In  it  is  bound  up  the  very  knowl- 
edge of  God  himself.    As  the  seer  has  said : 
"Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies ; 
Hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand, 
Little  flower; — but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 
That  the   flower  grozvs  we   can   easily  demonstrate  by 
successive  measurements.    How  it  grows  we  cannot  dis- 

22 


THE         GROWING         SEED 

cover  by  the  most  persistent  investigation.  In  fact,  too 
curious  and  frequent  examination  may  stop  the  process 
by  destroying  the  vital  principle. 

So  of  character.  Its  growth  is  secret,  mysterious,  and 
by  no  care  or  wisdom  of  ours  to  be  understood  or  ex- 
plained. The  very  effort  is  suicidal.  Whoever  keeps  his 
eyes  turned  in  upon  his  own  soul  that  he  may  discover  the 
secret  and  rate  of  its  growth  will  surely  paralyze  his 
spiritual  life.  He  will  inevitably  become  selfish,  morbid, 
and  wholly  unspiritual. 

Religious  teachers  of  the  past  enjoined  frequent  and 
exhaustive  self-examination  as  a  means  of  attaining  per- 
fect sainthood.  Result — a  mechanical  and  Christless 
Phariseeism  in  place  of  living  and  growing  spirituality. 
One  intelligent  glance  at  the  open  page  of  nature  would 
have  sufficed  to  convince  them  of  their  mistake.  Growth 
is  mysterious.  What  you  see  is  not  growth;  it  cannot 
be.  Whoever  fancies  himself  conscious  of  daily  spirit- 
ual growth  is  self-deceived.  "The  kingdom  of  God  com- 
eth  not  with  observation."  Self-contemplation  hinders 
growth;  virtue  stagnates  with  introspection. 

Says  Carlyle:  "If  in  any  sphere  of  man's  life,  then  in 
the  moral  sphere,  as  in  the  inmost  and  most  vital  of  all, 
it  is  good  that  there  be  wholeness ;  that  there  be  un- 
consciousness which  is  the  evidence  of  this.  Let  the  free, 
reasonable  will  which  dwells  in  us,  as  in  our  Holy  of 
Holies,  be  indeed  free,  and  obeyed  Hke  a  divinity,  as 
is  its  right  and  its  effort;  the  perfect  obedience  will  be 
the  silent  one." 

The  most  infallible  token  of  healthy  spiritual  growth 
is  entire  unconsciousness  of  growth,  entire  forgetfulness 
of  all  selfward  interests,  even  the  highest,  in  the  eager- 
ness of  service  and  devotion  to  the  will  of  God.  Every 
blade  of  grass,  every  spear  of  wheat,  every  stalk  of  corn, 
is  a  miracle  of  divine  power  whose  secret  working  we 
have  not  begun  to  fathom.  Is  not  a  redeemed  and  per- 
fected character  an  unspeakably  greater  miracle?    And 

23 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

shall  we  try  to  understand  the  greater  while  we  are 
ignorant  of  the  less? 

Again,  we  are  reminded  by  our  parable  that  the  vital 
process  is  spontaneous.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  the  natural 
and  inevitable  result  of  the  working  of  vital  force.  It 
is  the  necessary  expression  of  vitality.  The  seed  grows 
of  itself,  we  say.  No  direct  effort  of  man  can  accomplish 
the  process.  We  can  only  affect  it  indirectly  by  sur- 
rounding the  seed  with  circumstances  which  shall  be 
favorable  or  unfavorable  to  the  operation  of  these  in- 
herent vital  forces.  We  can  clear  away  obstacles  and 
leave  the  forces  free  for  best  action  or  we  can  clog  and 
hamper  them. 

Professor  Drummond  has  made  this  point  very  clear. 
"A  boy  grows,"  he  says,  "without  trying.  One  or  two 
simple  conditions  are  fulfilled  and  the  growth  goes  on. 
He  thinks  probably  as  little  about  the  conditions  as  about 
the  result ;  he  fulfils  the  conditions  by  habit,  the  result  fol- 
lows by  nature.  Both  processes  go  on  steadily  from  year 
to  year  apart  from  himself  and  all  but  in  spite  of  himself. 
One  would  never  think  of  telling  a  boy  to  grow.  A 
doctor  has  no  prescription  for  growth.  He  can  tell  me 
how  growth  may  be  stunted  or  impaired,  but  the  process 
itself  is  recognized  as  beyond  control — one  of  the  few, 
and  therefore  very  significant,  things  which  nature  keeps 
in  her  own  hands.  No  physician  of  souls  in  like  manner 
has  any  prescription  for  spiritual  growth.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion he  is  most  often  asked  and  most  often  answers 
wrongly.  He  may  prescribe  more  earnestness,  more 
prayer,  more  self-denial,  or  more  Christian  work. 
These  are  prescriptions  for  something,  but  not  for 
growth.  .  .  .  Manuals  for  devotion,  with  complicated 
rules  for  getting  on  in  the  Christian  life,  would  do  well 
sometimes  to  return  to  the  simplicity  of  nature ;  and  earn- 
est souls  who  are  attempting  sanctification  by  struggle  in- 
stead of  sanctification  by  faith  might  be  spared  much  hu- 
miliation by  learning  the  botany  of  Jesus.     There  can 

24 


THE         GROWING         SEED 

be  no  other  principle  of  growth  than  this.  It  is  a  vital 
fact.  And  to  try  to  make  a  thing  grow  is  as  absurd  as 
to  help  the  tide  to  come  in  or  the  sun  to  rise." 

Goethe  has  summed  up  the  same  thought  in  one  preg- 
nant sentence,  "While  one  strives,  he  errs." 

The  fruits  of  the  Spirit  are  not  the  lifeless  products 
of  the  sculptor's  chisel  or  the  triumphs  of  the  artist's 
skill.  They  are  living  things,  graces  which  have  grown 
from  the  seed  of  truth  by  means  of  the  vital  force  hid- 
den within  it.  They  are  the  manifestations  of  divme 
power  working  in  and  through  the  human  soul  for  its 
perfection  and  eternal  progress.  They  constitute  what 
Matthew  Arnold  calls,  'The  eternal  not  ourselves  that 
makes  for  righteousness." 

Finally,  our  parable  illustrates  the  fact  that  the  vital 
process  is  sure.  It  is  the  result  of  a  fixed,  divine  law. 
There  is  no  chance  or  caprice  in  nature.  Still 
less  is  there  any  failure.  Everything  follows  a  regu- 
lar and  clearly  defined  order.  The  sequence  of  cause 
and  effect  is  certain.  To  obtain  desired  results  the  ob- 
served conditions  must  be  fulfilled.  When  we  have  made 
the  proper  adjustments  of  cause,  we  may  depend  upon 
the  unvarying  action  of  divine  power  to  produce  un- 
varying results.  Mysterious  and  spontaneous  most  cer- 
tainly growth  is,  but  capricious  or  uncertain  never.  It 
is  as  changeless  as  the  God  on  whose  power  it  depends. 

Nor  is  it  otherwise  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  We  talk 
about  revivals  and  baptisms  of  the  Spirit,  which  are  but 
two  phases  in  the  growth  of  godlike  character,  as  though 
they  were  matters  of  uncertainty  or  chance.  We  lament 
our  own  unspirituality  or  excuse  the  slow  growth  of 
the  kingdom  in  the  world  about  us  in  terms  which  im- 
ply a  degree  of  capriciousness  in  the  working  of  divine 
power.  We  think  of  God's  Spirit  as  flitting  about  like 
a  butterfly,  lighting  now  here  and  now  there,  and  bring- 
ing to  this  soul  or  that  community  a  wonderful  uplift 
from  without.     Such  notions  are  ruinous  to  spiritual  de- 

25 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

velopment  either  in  the  soiU  or  in  the  community.  What 
is  the  Holy  Spirit  but  this  vital  element,  this  Power  of 
God  actually  resident  in  every  soul,  in  every  communi- 
ty, and  ever  waiting  for  the  favorable  conditions  to  man- 
ifest himself  in  the  growth  of  Christian  character! 
God  works  according  to  fixed  laws  in  the  redemption  of 
men.  There  is  no  more  uncertainty  in  the  spiritual 
realm  than  in  the  material.  We  may  obtain  heavenly 
harvests  as  surely  and  as  regularly  as  the  earthly,  if  we 
are  as  diligent  and  as  wise  in  sowing  the  seed  and  cul- 
tivating the  soil.  The  "Reign  of  Law"  is  an  accepted 
postulate  of  all  physical  science.  When  its  application 
to  the  spiritual  life  is  commonly  recognized,  when  the 
spiritual  husbandman  uses  the  same  common  sense  in 
his  work  that  is  required  for  ordinary  farming,  then  the 
kingdom  of  God  will  have  -entered  upon  a  new  era  of 
progress. 

Slow,  secret,  spontaneous,  sure — these  are  the  tokens 
of  growth  in  Christian  character  which  indicate  its  vi- 
tality. It  is  this  element  of  vitality  that  sharply  distin- 
guishes between  Christian  character  and  all  its  counter- 
feits. This  it  is  which  differentiates  between  spirituality 
and  morality.  By  a  process  of  self-restraint  and  reso- 
lution we  can  build  up  a  morality  that  may  resemble 
some  noble  temple  in  its  beauty  and  grandeur ;  but  it  will 
be,  after  all,  a  lifeless  thing,  mechanical,  limited,  incom- 
plete. The  true  Christly  character,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  the  manifestation  of  the  divine  life  in  the  soul,  at  first 
insignificant,  but  daily  growing  and  developing,  capable 
of  limitless  expansion,  having  endless  possibilities  of 
progress. 

No  mere  philosopher  is  Jesus,  painting  ideals  of  life 
and  character  to  be  wrought  out  by  human  wisdom  and 
human  power.  Rather  is  he  the  incarnation  and  re- 
vealer  of  that  divine  force  which  alone  can  produce  true 
and  holy  character.  Simple  indeed  is  his  statement  of 
human  duty.     Attention,  trust,  obedience — these  are  all 

26 


THE         GROWING        SEED 

that  he  requires;  but,  as  a  result  of  these,  wrought  out 
through  the  direct  efficiency  of  divine  power,  a  complete 
transformation  of  character,  social  and  individual,  is 
acquired.  If  the  former  parable  may  be  summed  up  in 
the  words,  "Work  out  your  own  salvation  with  fear  and 
trembling,"  this  adds  the  words,  "For  it  is  God  who 
worketh  in  you  both  to  will  and  to  work,  for  his  good 
pleasure." 


27 


The  Conservation 
of  Character 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Conservation 
of  Character 

THE  WHEAT  AND  THE  TARES 

Matt.  13:24-30,  36-43 

Text. — "Let  both  grow  together  until  the  hardest."" — Matt.  13  :  30 

THE  ideal  of  character  is  pure  virtue.  The 
ideal  of  society  is  universal  righteousness. 
The  ideal  of  religion  is  good  unmixed  with 
ill.  But  where,  among  men,  can  these  be 
found?  Utopia  exists  only  in  the  poetic 
imagination.  The  perfect  society  is  a  dream  yet  unreal- 
ized. The  practical  experience  of  every-day  life  on 
earth  always  reveals  the  evil  in  closest  fellowship 
with  the  good.  As  we  never  find  pure  gold  in  masses, 
but  in  minutest  grains  mingled  with  sand  or  scattered 
through  the  worthless  rock,  and  as  the  wheat  comes  to 
us  encased  in  chaff,  so  your  saint  generally  betrays 
some  very  unsaintly  traits,  your  church  has  its  faithless 
disciples,  your  society  has  its  incorrigibles,  your  family 
has  its  "black  sheep."  In  short,  wherever  the  Son  of 
man  sows  the  good  seed  of  righteousness,  the  devil  is 
pretty  sure  to  get  in  some  tares  of  evil.  Even  among 
our  Lord's  apostles  one  was  a  Judas. 

No  picture,  therefore,  in  all  that  lakeside  panorama, 
is  more  familiar,  none  more  painfully  true  to  the  com- 
mon experience  than  this :  "The  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
likened  unto  a  man  that  sowed  good  seed  in  his  field: 
but  while  men  slept,  his  enemy  came  and  sowed  tares 

31 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

also  among  the  wheat,  and  went  away.  But  when  the 
blade  sprang  up  and  brought  forth  fruit,  then  appeared 
the  tares  also." 

To  every  soul  this  world  is  at  first  a  repository  of 
good  seed.  The  sowing  of  the  Son  of  man  is  abundant 
on  every  hand.  For  a  time  we  are  unconscious  of  any- 
thing else.  The  child  mind  with  its  innocent  superficial- 
ness  sees  in  everything  and  everybody  the  expression  of 
truth  and  purity,  the  inspiration  to  new  gladness.  But 
with  growing  intelligence  and  deepening  insight  there 
comes  a  sad  experience  of  disillusion.  At  some  time  or 
other  much  that  was  hitherto  supposed  to  be  good  wheat 
proves  to  be  worthless  tares.  Unexpected  conditions 
reveal  themselves,  and  the  theory  of  life  must  be  read- 
justed to  meet  them. 

Evil  exists.  Try  as  we  may,  we  cannot  long  delude 
ourselves  with  the  notion  that  evil  is  either  unreal  or 
good.  While  we  sleep  it  may  be  unobserved ;  but  when 
we  awake  it  confronts  us  and  we  must  reckon  with  it. 
More  and  more  clearly  the  fact  forces  itself  upon  us 
as  we  grow  in  intelligence  and  moral  character.  No 
good  can  be  attempted  anywhere,  much  less  achieved 
without  conflict  with  evil. 

We  find  the  evil  first  in  our  own  hearts.  The  eflFort 
to  build  up  personal  character  is  a  lifelong  struggle 
with  evil  passions,  desires,  habits.  What  disciple  of 
experience  and  thoughtfulness  has  not  often  been  im- 
pelled to  confess  with  Paul,  "The  good  which  I  would 
I  do  not:  but  the  evil  which  I  would  not,  that  I  prac- 
tise." "When  I  would  do  good,  evil  is  present  with 
me" !  The  new-born  soul  may  expect,  frequently  does 
expect,  that  regeneration  will  bring  immediate  and  per- 
manent release  from  all  temptation,  that  in  one  brief 
moment  all  traces  of  evil  will  be  eradicated  from  his 
heart  never  again  to  assert  themselves.  But  after  the 
first  emotional  ecstasy  is  past  he  learns  that  what  he 
mistook  for  the  note  of  victory  was  really  the  trumpet- 

32 


THE     WHEAT    AND     THE     TARES 

call  to  battle.  Enlistment  is  but  a  prelude  to  the  drill 
of  the  camps  and  the  toil  of  the  march  and  the  field. 
Only  he  that  endureth  to  the  end  shall  be  saved. 

And  when  we  turn  our  eyes  away  from  self,  and  look 
on  the  world  round  about  us,  do  we  not  meet  with  a  sim- 
ilar experience?  Who  that  has  ever  tried  to  scatter 
the  seeds  of  righteousness,  to  build  up  the  kingdom 
of  God  among  men,  has  not  met  opposing  forces  at 
every  turn?  Did  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  ever  be- 
gin to  manifest  itself  in  a  church  or  a  community  but 
the  devil  at  once  redoubled  his  activity?  A  revival  of 
religion  always  means  a  counter  revival  of  wickedness. 
No  effort  of  good,  however  self-evident  and  disinter- 
ested, but  will  arouse  opposition  and  meet  with  mis- 
representation. It  exactly  accords  with  observed  laws 
that  the  period  of  Jesus'  ministry  on  earth  should  also 
be  a  period  of  unusual  Satanic  activity,  a  period  when 
men,  more  than  ever  before  or  since,  were  "possessed 
with  devils." 

But  the  fact  that  evil  exists  needs  no  emphasis.  It 
obtrudes  itself  whether  we  will  or  no.  We  at  once  ask, 
Whence  does  it  come?  And  what  shall  we  do  with  it? 
The  servants  of  the  householder  came  and  said  unto 
him:  "Sir,  didst  thou  not  sow  good  seed  in  thy  field? 
whence  then  hath  it  tares?"  This  is  always  the  first 
question ;  yet  it  is  a  question  of  comparatively  slight 
importance.  It  is  therefore  answered  briefly.  "An 
enemy  hath  done  this."  Even  the  further  explanation, 
"The  enemy  that  sowed  them  is  the  devil,"  does  not 
add  much  to  our  knowledge  of  the  subject. 

We  waste  a  great  deal  of  time  and  strength  in  search- 
ing for  an  answer  to  the  question,  "Whence  then  hath 
it  tares?"  A  child  displays  some  unlovely  trait,  and, 
instead  of  giving  our  undivided  attention  to  the  work 
of  correcting  the  evil,  we  begin  to  ask,  "From  whom 
does  he  take  it?"  Or  we  ourselves  yield  to  some  evil 
propensity,  and  we  immediately  trace  the  stream  of  evil 

33 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

tendency  to  a  remote  ancestor  on  whose  shoulders  we 
lay  all  the  blame  for  our  wrong  doing  or  wrong  wishing. 
Now  the  study  of  heredity  is  doubtless  of  great  value 
in  its  proper  place ;  but  it  is  out  of  place  in  the  presence 
of  manifest  evil.  There  the  first  and  chief  thought 
should  be  of  cure.  It  may  be  interesting  from  a  scien- 
tific standpoint  to  know  that  this  habit  was  inherited 
from  one's  grandfather  and  that  unchristly  spirit  from 
a  long  forgotten  great-aunt;  but  is  it  not  unspeakably 
more  important  to  know  how  the  bad  habit  may  be 
cured  or  the  evil  spirit  exorcised?  There  is  a  lot  of 
sheer  pedantry  in  the  modern  discussion  of  heredity. 
Worse  than  that,  it  is  made  the  scapegoat  for  all  manner 
of  shortcomings  and  iniquities.  Because  of  it  parents 
excuse  the  inexcusable  faults  of  their  children  and  their 
own  indolent  neglect  to  correct  those  faults.  Because 
of  it  the  categorical  imperative  of  righteousness  is  often 
exchanged  for  the  weak-kneed  interrogative  of  unman- 
liness  and  sin. 

Of  much  greater  practical  value,  therefore,  is  the  sec- 
ond question  of  the  laborers,  "Wilt  thou  then  that  we  go 
and  gather  them  up?"  In  other  words,  What  shall  we  do 
with  the  evil  now  that  we  have  discovered  it?  How 
shall  we  remove  it?  This  is  the  question  around  which 
the  parable  clusters.  It  is  the  question  about  which  the 
mind  of  all  humanity  is  agitated  to-day.  And  the  story  of 
The  Tares  and  the  Wheat  embodies  our  Lord's  answer 
to  every  questioning  mind. 

The  Conservation  of  Christly  Character — that  is  the 
topic  suggested.  Evil  springs  up  everywhere  in  closest 
contact  with  the  good.  It  touches  the  good  on  all  sides. 
It  crowds  upon  it,  is  intermingled  with  it,  counterfeits  it, 
threatens  it.  How  shall  the  good  be  saved  from  con- 
tamination?   How  shall  its  best  development  be  secured? 

The  proposal  of  the  servants  illustrates  the  purely 
human  method  of  dealing  with  the  question.  "Wilt  thou 
then  that  we  go  and  gather  them  up?"     Shall  we  turn 

34 


THE    WHEAT    AND    THE    TARES 

from  the  wheat  to  the  tares?  Shall  we  cease  to  think 
about  and  cultivate  the  good,  and  concentrate  our  force 
and  our  attention  upon  the  evil  ?  This  is,  I  say,  the  uni- 
versal human  method.  Our  first  impulse  in  this  work  is 
always  negative,  to  root  up,  to  destroy. 

Take  the  matter  of  individual  character.  A  soul 
awakens  to  the  consciousness  of  its  divine  nature,  of  its 
spiritual  possibilities.  Aspirations  towards  the  Christ- 
life  are  kindled.  But  there  are  unchristly  habits  and 
tempers.  What  shall  be  done  with  these?  "Root  them 
up,"  "Cast  them  out,"  says  the  teacher  of  moral  phil- 
osophy; and  often  he  does  this  in  the  name  of  the  gospel. 
Straightway  the  evils  are  made  the  object  of  a  vigorous 
attack.  At  the  beginning  of  a  new  year  or  on  some 
special  anniversary,  strong  resolutions  are  made  never 
again  to  yield  to  the  temper  or  indulge  the  evil  habit. 
Sometimes  these  resolutions  are  buttressed  with  vows 
and  pledges  of  the  most  solemn  kind.  Yet  in  most 
cases  they  are  broken  as  soon  as  made.  And  when 
kept,  it  is  often  at  the  expense  of  moral  strength  and 
effort  that  might  have  been  used  to  much  better  advan- 
tage in  the  direct  service  of  the  Lord. 

Salvation  by  resolution  is  always  a  disastrous  failure. 
How  many  there  are  who,  having  struggled  earnestly 
against  some  evil  habit  and  been  defeated,  have  become 
discouraged,  and  the  very  aspirations  towards  right- 
eousness that  had  begun  to  form  themselves  in  the  ^oul 
have  been  uptorn  and  destroyed!  How  many,  too,  of 
stronger  will  have  conquered  in  the  fight,  but  have  so 
exhausted  their  time  and  strength  in  the  warfare  that 
they  have  accomplished  nothing  else!  They  have  won 
the'  victory,  it  is  true,  but  it  has  been  an  empty  triumph. 
It  has  brought  them  no  return  adequate  to  the  outlay. 
Such  a  life  is  like  a  garden  in  which  the  gardener  has 
so  busied  himself  with  keeping  out  the  weeds  that  he 
has  had  no  time  to  raise  any  fruit.     It  is  like  a  fortress 

35 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

so  careful  for  its  own  defense  that  it  affords  no  protec- 
tion to  the  surrounding  country. 

Again,  take  the  phrase  "kingdom  of  heaven"  in  its 
larger  sense — the  kingdom  in  the  world,  the  Christly 
character  in  the  race.  How  have  men  sought  to  de- 
velop that?  Before  the  advent  of  Jesus  but  one  method 
was  known.  The  Hebrews  waged  a  war  of  extermina- 
tion against  the  ungodly  inhabitants  of  Canaan.  Had 
their  power  increased  and  the  national  growth  made  it 
possible,  the  same  policy  would  have  been  carried  the 
world  over.  The  Hebrews  were  only  following  more 
earnestly  and  consistently  than  others  the  universal  ideal. 
What  they  did  the  Mohammedan  has  done  since,  is  doing 
to-day,  so  far  as  he  is  able.  And  the  Christian  Church 
has  often  tried  to  do  the  same,  notwithstanding  the  plain 
teachings  of  Jesus. 

The  history  of  the  Church  has  been  chiefly  a  history  of 
repeated  conflicts  with  heresy  and  sin.  It  has  been  a 
continuous  effort  to  save  the  world  by  rooting  out  evil. 
Just  as  soon  as  the  Church  escaped  the  severity  of  Jew- 
ish and  heathen  persecutions,  she  became  in  her  turn  the 
persecutor  of  those  who  did  not  conform  to  her  ideals 
of  truth  and  life.  When  the  age  of  persecution  passed, 
there  came  the  age  of  controversy  and  argument.  And 
to-day  many  an  earnest  disciple  wastes  his  power  in  argu- 
ing against  infidelity  or  some  minor  error  in  religious 
teaching  when  he  should  use  it  all  in  preaching  a  posi- 
tive gospel  of  truth  and  love. 

"The  blood  of  the  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the 
Church,"  said  a  discerning  writer.  No  less  true  is  it 
that  the  blood  of  many  who  have  been  persecuted  or 
punished  for  wrong-doing  has  been  the  seed  of  greater 
and  more  persistent  evil.  The  greatest  infidel  of  the  last 
century  owed  not  a  little  of  his  reputation  and  power 
to  the  fact  that  some  very  respectable  Christians  tried 
to  root  up  his  teachings  by  argument. 

The  devil  is  never  better  pleased  than  when  he  can 

36 


THE    WHEAT    AND     THE     TARES 

keep  Christians  busy  with  the  negative  work  of  trying 
to  root  out  evil ;  for  he  knows  that  a  good  deal  of  real 
wheat  will  come  up  too.  The  infidel  won  a  great  many 
more  disciples  after  England's  great  Christian  states- 
man paid  him  the  compliment  of  a  logical  duel.  Every 
false  teaching  gains  a  larger  influence  over  a  certain 
class  of  minds  by  the  very  attacks  made  upon  it  in  the 
supposed  interests  of  truth.  Every  sermon  preached 
against  error  is  a  free  advertisement  of  the  error.  The 
voice  of  universal  experience,  therefore,  confirms  the 
advice  of  the  wise  husbandman,  "Nay ;  lest  haply  while 
ye  gather  up  the  tares,  ye  root  up  the  wheat  with  them." 

The  divine  method  of  solving  this  great  question  is 
indicated  in  the  words  that  follow :  "Let  both  grow  to- 
gether until  the  harvest."  In  contrast  with  the  human 
method  which  is  negative,  the  divine  method  is  positive. 
It  is  not  "root  up,"  but  "let  grow." 

In  the  cultivation  of  personal  character,  this  means 
consecration  instead  of  resolution.  That  is  to  say,  we 
shall  grow  in  Christliness  of  spirit  and  life,  not  by  mak- 
ing ever  new  and  stronger  resolutions  against  our  un- 
christly  qualities,  but  by  positively  devoting  all  our 
powers  to  the  service  of  the  Master,  and  never  stopping 
to  think  of  the  evil  at  all. 

The  mind  is  invaded  by  evil  thoughts ;  what  shall  we 
do  about  it?  Drive  them  out?  Resolve  not 
to  admit  them  any  more?  No.  That  were 
worse  than  useless.  Evil  thoughts  and  feelings 
the  more  resolved  against  become  the  more  deeply 
entrenched.  What,  then,  shall  we  do?  Let  them  alone. 
Pay  no  attention  to  them.  Fill  the  mind  with  good 
thoughts.  "Whatsoever  things  are  true,  whatsoever 
things  are  honorable,  whatsoever  things  are  just,  what- 
soever things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things  are  lovely, 
whatsoever  things  are  of  good  report ;  if  there  be  any 
virtue,  and  if  there  be  any  praise,  think  (think  posi- 
tively and  persistently)  on  these  things."    If  we  do  this, 

37 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

the  thoughts  of  evil  will  soon  cease  to  trouble  us,  for 
they  will  be  crowded  out  of  the  mind. 

So  with  speech.  We  may  sometimes  accomplish  a 
trifling  reform  by  resolving  and  vigorously  striving 
against  hasty,  careless  or  impure  speech ;  but  if  we  con- 
secrate our  tongues  to  the  service  of  God,  speaking 
always  and  everywhere  for  him,  the  victory  is  won  un- 
consciously and  without  a  struggle. 

Why  not  follow  the  same  plan  with  all  things  that 
hinder  the  growth  of  saintly  character?  Let  every  pow- 
er of  body  and  mind  be  fully  occupied  with  active 
service  for  Christ.  Fill  time  and  strength  with  the 
good,  and  the  evil  will  be  crowded  out.  Human  life  is 
like  a  measure  of  limited  capacity,  or  like  a  field  of 
limited  area.  Fill  it  with  activity  of  one  kind  and  it 
cannot  contain  more.  Let  streams  of  good  thoughts  and 
good  deeds  flow  in  on  every  side,  and  all  evil  will  of 
necessity  be  driven  out.  But  so  long  as  we  do  not  allow 
the  good  to  flow  in,  we  resolve  and  fight  in  vain  against 
the  evil. 

A  well-meaning  but  idle  young  fellow  often  fell  into 
temptation  and  sin  because  of  his  idleness,  and  as  often 
came  to  his  pastor  in  deep  contrition  and  asked  him 
to  pray  with  him  that  he  might  not  fall  again.  At 
length  the  pastor  saw  the  folly  of  such  a  course  and  said 
in  reply  to  another  request  of  the  familiar  sort,  "Pray 
for  you  !  What  is  the  use  ?  I  have  prayed  for  you  again 
and  again  and  you  are  no  better  for  it.  Go  and  get  a 
steady  job,  and  then  I  will  pray  for  you  if  you  need  it." 
The  young  man  followed  his  pastor's  advice  and  then 
found  that  he  had  no  need  of  his  prayers  for  that  par- 
ticular weakness. 

The  great  diving-bell  goes  down  into  the  sea,  and, 
although  it  is  open  underneath,  no  water  enters. 
The  bell  is  filled  with  air,  hence  no  water  can  enter. 
The  true  life  is  like  a  diving-bell  let  down  into  the  sea 
of  temptation  and  sin.    If  it  be  filled  with  the  breath  of 

38 


THE     WHEAT    AND     THE     TARES 

God,  crowded  with  the  atmosphere  of  devotion  and  lov- 
ing service,  temptation  cannot  enter.  That  must  remain 
outside  the  Hfe,  dark  but  harmless.  The  empty  life,  on 
the  other  hand,  however  pure  and  earnest  it  may  be, 
invites  temptation  and  offers  itself  an  easy  prey  to  the 
assaults  of  sin. 

The  best  way  to  conquer  your  vices  is  to  cultivate  your 
virtues.  The  best  way  to  avoid  temptation  is  to  fill  your 
life  with  active  service. 

In  relation  to  others,  also,  our  efforts  should  be  posi- 
tive. The  world  suft'ers  from  negative  preaching  and 
from  negative  striving.  There  are  too  many  reformers 
whose  only  ideal  is  to  root  up  and  tear  down.  Too 
many  are  eager  to  break  the  images  which  others  wor- 
ship while  they  themselves  worship  nothing  but  the  break- 
ing. That  is  their  only  religion.  There  are  hundreds 
of  men  ready  to  tell  their  fellows  what  not  to  believe 
for  every  one  who  will  show  them  something  worth  be- 
lieving. Hundreds  are  ready  to  say,  "Thou  shalt  not," 
for  one  to  say,  "Thou  shalt."  What  are  skepticism  and 
infidelity  but  endless  negatives?  As  Christians  we  need 
to  guard  ourselves  carefully  against  copying  the 
methods  of  our  opponents  in  our  effort  to  overcome 
them.  '^ 

"Let  both  grow  together,"  is  the  Master's  word. 
What?  Shall  we  let  false  teaching  grow  side  by  side 
with  the  true,  with  never  an  attempt  to  refute  it?  Cer- 
tainly. Our  one  duty  as  disciples  of  Jesus  is  to  proclaim 
God's  truth  and  to  prove  it  true  by  our  transformed 
lives.  The  world  may  not  discern  the  difference  between 
true  and  false  teaching  at  a  glance;  but  the  world  does 
know  the  difference  between  love  and  selfishness,  be- 
tween honesty  and  fraud,  between  purity  and  foulness. 
If  we  preach  and  practise  a  gospel  of  purity  and  kind- 
ness and  helpfulness,  we  need  have  little  fear  of  any 
false  teaching  that  does  not  show  these  good  fruits. 

Any  natural  interpretation  of  the  parable  cannot  evade 


35 


/ 
/ 

/ , 
/ 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

its  bearing  upon  the  commonly  accepted  notions  of 
church  discipHne.  True,  so  prominent  an  expositor  as 
Arnot  says,  "The  parable  condemns  persecution,  but  it 
seems  not  to  bear  upon  discipHne  at  all.  Arguments 
against  the  exclusion  of  unworthy  members,  founded  on 
this  parable,  are  nothing  else  than  perversions  of  Scrip- 
ture." But  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  palpable 
perversion  of  Scripture  than  that  by  which  Mr.  Arnot 
himself  reaches  his  conclusion.  It  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  a  piece  of  exegetical  juggling.  Even  Dr.  Dods 
is  so  far  influenced  by  conventional  interpretations  that 
he  declares,  "This  parable,  it  is  true,  is  not  a  guide  for 
the  action  of  the  rulers  of  the  Church  towards  its  mem- 
bers ;  but,  indirectly,  a  warning  against  hasty  action  is 
given  to  those  in  authority."  Why  this  particular  ex- 
ception should  be  made  in  the  application  of  the  truth 
here  taught  does  not  appear  to  the  common  mind.  Were 
it  not  better  to  face  the  universal  application  of  the 
truth,  and  to  make  no  exceptions? 

True  Christianity  implies  tolerance.  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, a  tolerance  born  of  indifference.  It  is  rather  the 
tolerance  that  grows  out  of  positive  activity  in  right  di- 
rections. It  is  the  tolerance  that  comes  from  being  too 
busy  with  our  own  work  ever  to  worry  about  the  work 
of  our  neighbors.  It  is  tolerance  made  necessary  by  the 
fact  that  we  are  so  absorbed  in  the  fulfilment  of  im- 
perative duty  that  we  have  no  time  nor  strength  for 
controversy.  To  every  challenge  of  untruth  or  opposi- 
tion it  replies  with  Nehemiah,  "I  am  doing  a  great  work, 
so  that  I  cannot  come  down." 

Again,  in  the  matter  of  modern  reforms,  do  we  not 
too  often  expend  our  force  in  negative  effort?  Take  the 
temperance  work,  for  example.  I  sometimes  wonder  if 
we  are  not  giving  too  much  time  and  thought  to  attacks 
upon  intemperance.  By  prohibitory  and  similar  methods 
we  endeavor  to  root  up  the  evil ;  but  do  we  as  eagerly 
cultivate   the   positive   virtue   of   temperance?     Do   we 

40 


THE     WHEAT    AND    THE     TARES 

think  of  supplying  something  that  shall  displace  the 
evil  habit  we  seek  to  cure?  This  evil,  like  many  an- 
other, is  the  outgrowth  of  certain  natural  cravings  in 
human  life.  It  may  spring  from  the  desire  for  good 
fellowship,  or  from  want  of  occupation,  or  similar  cause. 
When  we  have  removed  temptation  we  have  accom- 
plished but  half  the  work,  and  that  the  less  important 
half.  There  still  remains  the  necessity  of  filling  that 
part  of  the  life  thus  left  vacant. 

There  is  room  for  progress  in  the  direction  of  posi- 
tive effort.  The  age  to  come  must  be  an  age  of  building 
rather  than  of  tearing  down,  an  age  of  cultivation  and 
development  rather  than  an  age  of  restriction.  Its  key- 
note must  be  "Thou  shalt,"  instead  of  "Thou  shalt  not." 
We  must  try  to  lead  men  in  the  development  of  their 
best  powers  and  tendencies  rather  than  in  the  repression 
of  their  worst. 

Let  both  grow — and  what  will  be  the  result?  Plainly 
this,  that  the  wheat  will  attain  its  best  growth.  But 
what  of  the  tares  ?  "In  the  time  of  the  harvest  I  will  say 
to  the  reapers,  Gather  up  first  the  tares,  and  bind  them  in 
bundles  to  burn  them."  Or,  as  our  Lord  interprets  the 
picture,  "The  Son  of  man  shall  send  forth  his  angels, 
and  they  shall  gather  out  of  his  kingdom  all  things  that 
cause  stumbling,  and  them  that  do  iniquity,  and  shall  cast 
them  into  the  furnace  of  fire." 

These  figures  tell  us  little  regarding  the  method  by 
which  the  result  is  to  be  brought  about.  That  is  not  the 
intention.  The  thought  is  purposely  centered  upon  one 
point — our  duty  in  the  matter.  Enough  for  us  to  know 
that  it  is  not  our  business  to  root  out  the  evil.  Enough 
for  us  to  turn  our  whole  attention  and  strength  to  doing 
God's  work.  But  the  fact  is  made  clear  that  our  effort 
will  not  be  in  vain.  Character  will  be  perfected,  and 
evil  will  at  last  be  removed  and  destroyed.  The  good 
alone  is  eternal.    Righteousness  is  immortal. 

What  we  call  evil  has  its  purpose  in  the  economy  of 

41 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

God's  kingdom.  We  do  not  understand  it;  but  we  are 
assured  that  when  its  purpose  is  accomplished  the  evil 
will  trouble  us  no  longer.  Whether  by  the  development 
of  grace  even  through  the  discipHne  of  sin  the  sin  itself 
is  gradually  crowded  out  and  dies,  or  whether  it  is 
removed  by  some  external  divine  process  at  the  last,  is 
a  matter  of  least  moment.  Sufficient  to  know  that  if  we 
do  the  work  God  gives  us  to  do,  we  shall  at  last  be  free 
from  the  presence  and  power  of  sin,  and  shall  serve 
him  in  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  sons  of  God. 


42 


The  Growth  of 
Character 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Growth  of 
Character 

THE    MUSTARD   SEED 

Matt.  13:31,  32;   Mark  4:30-32;  Luke  13:18,  19 

Text. — ^^ Less  than  all  seeds;  but  .  .  .  greater  than  the  herbs  .** — 

Matt.  13:32 

IF  there  is  one  thing  more  wonderful  about  a  seed 
than  its  vitaHty,  it  is  its  growth — the  great  resuhs 
that  spring  from  small  beginnings.  The  fact  of 
growth  is  in  and  of  itself  a  greater  miracle  than 
the  method  of  growth.  Hold  a  tiny  acorn 
in  your  hand  as  you  stand  beside  some  gigantic 
oak,  and  try  to  imagine  that  enormous  and 
solid  body  compressed  within  the  little  shell.  The 
mere  working  of  the  vital  force  is  marvelous,  but  the 
magnitude  of  its  results  defies  comprehension. 

What  though  the  mustard-seed  is  not  literally  the  least 
of  all  known  seeds,  nor  the  mustard-plant  very  great 
among  the  trees?  There  is  considerable  greatness 
springing  from  inconsiderable  littleness,  and  involving 
a  miracle  of  creation.  The  want  of  literal  exactness 
does  not  destroy  the  significance  of  the  proverb,  nor 
does  it  render  the  spiritual  symbolism  of  the  figure  any 
the  less  striking. 

The  parable  of  The  Mustard  Seed  is  a  picture  of  the 
growth  of  Christly  character.  It  represents  not  the  man- 
ner nor  the  precise  extent  of  spiritual  growth,  but  the 
fact  of  that  growth.  It  teaches  us  how  great  results 
iiTthe  spiritual  life,  as  in  the  physical  or  material  life, 

45 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

spring  from  sources  apparently  the  most  insignificant. 

"The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  Hke  unto  a  grain  of 
mustard  seed,  which  a  man  took,  and  sowed  in  his 
field."  In  other  words,  character,  even  the  noblest  and 
most  saintly,  is  insignificant  in  its  beginnings.  A  kindly 
word,  a  repentant  thought,  a  trifling  act,  unnoticed  by  the 
busy  world,  despised  by  the  self-sufficient,  ridiculed  by  the 
thoughtless,  may  contain  the  spiritual  germ.  But  the 
Christly  character,  when  it  is  full  grown,  is  the  grandest 
thing  on  earth. 

Simple  enough  and  most  perfectly  childlike  was  the 
answer  of  the  little  boy  in  the  temple,  "Wist  ye  not 
that  I  must  be  about  my  Father's  business?"  But  there 
was  the  utterance  of  a  conviction,  then  but  dimly  un- 
derstood,, from  which  sprang  the  divinest  character  the 
world  has  ever  seen — a  character  that  justified  the 
phrase,  "God  manifest  in  the  flesh." 

Did  it  seem  a  small  thing  to  those  rude  fishermen  of 
Galilee  when  the  Master  said  to  them  one  day,  "Follow 
me,"  and  they  obeyed?  There  was  little  spiritual  sig- 
nificance in  the  act;  perhaps  nothing  intelligently  relig- 
ious so  far  as  the  disciples  themselves  were  concerned. 
Yet  from  that  hour  a  change  began  to  come  over  their 
lives.  That  act  of  obedience  was  the  point  of  departure 
upon  a  course  of  life  that  ended  in  a  complete  moral 
and  spiritual  transformation.  By  it  those  men  were 
lifted  from  their  obscurity  and  enthroned  among  the 
great  ones  of  earth.  Better  still,  they  were  led  forth 
from  their  selfishness,  bigotry  and  narrow-minded  little- 
ness, and  were  made  instruments  in  the  salvation  of  the 
world.  Their  horizon  of  interest  and  sympathy,  which 
hitherto  had  been  limited  to  the  shores  of  a  small  lake, 
yes,  to  the  planks  of  their  own  boat  and  the  cords  of 
their  own  net,  began  to  extend  itself  till  it  included  the 
whole  brotherhood  of  mankind  and  was  coextensive 
with  the  known  world.  Peasants  who  before  this  had 
been  mere  units  in  the  race  of  mankind,  began  to  take 

46 


THE       MUSTARD       SEED 

on  a  marked  individuality,  and  when  the  character 
which  grew  from  this  seed  had  attained  its  maturity, 
they  were  written  "saints"  upon  the  deathless  page  of 
history. 

A  similar  transformation,  traceable  to  a  like  trifling 
cause,  has  taken  place  in  myriads  of  lives  through  the 
succeeding  ages.  One  brief  sentence  of  Scripture  meet- 
ing the  eye  of  a  German  monk  was  the  mustard-seed ; 
the  character  of  Martin  Luther,  the  great  reformer,  was 
the  tree  that  grew  therefrom.  A  single  kind  word  from 
an  unknown  friend,  the  mustard-seed ;  the  tree,  John  B. 
Gough,  rescued  from  a  drunkard's  grave  to  become  the 
greatest  apostle  of  temperance  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
Thomas  a  Kempis'  "Imitation  of  Christ"  read  in  idle 
moments  on  shipboard^  the  mustard-seed;  the  heart  of 
John  Newton,  a  reckless,  immoral  young  man,  an  in- 
fidel and  a  slave-trader,  the  soil  into  which  it  fell;  the 
tree,  a  saintly  character  that  has  embodied  itself  in 
some  of  the  sweetest  hymns  of  the  Church,  not  to  speak 
of  the  noble  work  done  as  a  preacher  of  the  gospel. 

How  small  are  the  forces  that  oftentimes  determine 
character!  The  humble  prayer  of  the  publican,  "God, 
be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner";  the  terrified  cry  of  the 
wicked  and  superstitious  jailer,  "What  must  I  do  to  be 
saved?";  the  question  of  the  stricken  persecutor,  "Lord, 
what  wilt  thou  have  me  to  do  ?" ;  these  seem  mere  passing 
incidents,  too  trifling  to  result  in  radical  chang'es 
of  life  and  spirit.  Yet  from  such  small  seeds 
has  sprung  the  true  life  in  many  a  soul  that 
else  had  been  hopelessly  lost  and  dead.  Hid- 
den deep  in  the  heart,  its  divine  energy  has  at  last  burst 
forth  into  a  noble  tree  with  all  its  beautiful  blossoms 
of  hope  and  its  precious  fruit  of  righteousness.  As  a 
mere  touch  of  the  Saviour's  finger  brought  new  life  and 
purity  to  the  flesh  that  had  been  foul  with  disease,  so 
the  most  trivial  contact  of  a  soul  with  the  divine  may 

47 


THE    TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

be  the  beginning  of  a  growth  that  shall  end  in  the  com- 
plete spiritual  transformation  of  the  subject. 

A  quiet  word,  a  single  line  of  some  familiar  hymn, 
a  small  act  of  Christian  sympathy — by  such  trifling 
things  as  these  has  hope  been  restored,  has  evil  been 
conquered,  have  souls  been  saved.  Do  the  messages  of 
the  gospel,  "Believe,"  "Repent,"  "Obey,"  "Confess," 
"Look  unto  Jesus,"  "Follow  me," — do  these  seem  wholly 
inadequate  to  lift  men  out  of  the  depths  of  sin  and  sor- 
row and  despair?  They  are  but  mustard-seeds.  Let 
them  be  sown  in  human  lives  and  watered  with  the  dews 
of  the  Spirit,  and  they  will  surely  spring  up  in  noble 
growths  of  character.  Not  a  character  the  world  has 
ever  seen  but  sprang  from  seed  equally  small. 

Like  Naaman  of  old,  many  of  us  are  continually  look- 
ing for  "some  great  thing"  that  may  come  into  our 
lives  to  transfigure  and  make  them  saintly,  to  cleanse 
away  the  stains  of  sin  and  to  impart  the  love  and  power 
of  holiness.  Let  this  parable  teach  us  the  folly  of  such 
expectation.  The  secret  of  your  salvation  and  of  mine 
lies  not  in  the  opportunity  for  large  achievement  or 
sacrifice,  but  in  the  doing  of  some  insignificant  duty 
that  presents  itself  to  us.  To  take  a  stand  among 
Christians,  to  unite  with  Christ's  Church,  to  habitually 
attend  the  gathering  for  prayer,  to  do  a  kind  deed  in 
the  name  of  the  Master,  to  speak  the  word  of  cheer  to 
a  fainting  soul — is  this  sainthood?  No,  but  it  is  the 
mustard-seed  from  which  may  grow  the  noblest  type 
of  sainthood.  And  no  saintly  character  ever  yet  grew 
from  larger  seed. 

I    "Think  nought  a  trifle,  though  it  small  appear; 
Small  sands  the  mountain,  moments  make  the  year. 
And  trifles  life." 

But  we  must  not  stay  longer  with  this  thought.  There 
is  a  broader  interpretation  of  the  picture.  The  growth 
of  God's  kingdom  in  the  zvorld — what  is  that?  Is  it 
the  extension   of  the   Christian    Church?     Is   it   to  be 

48 


THE       MUSTARD       SEED 

measured  by  comparing  the  little  band  of  disciples 
clustered  about  Jesus  with  the  numerous  host  now  en- 
rolled under  the  banner  of  the  cross?  So  we  are  wont 
to  think.  And  our  efforts  to  build  up  the  kingdom  of 
God  are  very  often  mere  efforts  for  Church  extension. 
If  the  Church  grows,  we  imagine  that  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  in  a  prosperous  condition.  If  the  Church 
does  not  increase  in  numbers  at  any  particular  period, 
we  mourn  over  the  stagnation  in  the  kingdom.  Yet 
the  phrase  "kingdom  of  God"  as  used  by  our  Lord 
never  had  any  but  the  remotest  and  most  indirect  refer- 
ence to  the  Church.  Any  attempt  to  measure  the  growth 
or  progress  of  the  kingdom  by  merely  gaging  the  in- 
crease in  numbers  in  the  Church  is  always  misleading. 
As  well  attempt  to  measure  the  population  and  progress 
of  an  earthly  nation  by  calling  the  roll  of  her  standing 
army. 

Times  of  most  rapid  growth  in  the  Church  have  not 
seldom  been  times  of  utter  stagnation  or  even  of  shrink- 
age in  the  kingdom  of  God.  When,  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, Christianity  became  the  state  religion  of  Rome, 
the  Church  took  a  sudden  forward  stride,  but  the  tide 
of  Christly  character  flowed  backwards.  That  union 
brought  loss  rather  than  gain  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 
We  are  dealing,  let  us  remember,  not  with  any  organi- 
zation or  aggregation  of  men,  but  solely  with  character 
— the  Christly  character  in  individuals  and  in  the  race. 
What  was  the  origin  and  what  has  been  the  progress 
of  Christliness  in  the  world? 

Jesus  came  to  a  barbarous  world.  Even  the  civili- 
zations of  the  age  were  the  gilded  sepulchers  of  a  dead 
morality.  Government  was  organized  oppression  and 
cruelty.  Culture  was  refined  iniquity.  Religion  was  a 
mask  of  hypocrisy  and  selfishness.  Mankind  was  sunk 
in  wickedness.  The  few  strong  ones  were  lords.  The 
many  weak  ones  were  slaves.  Notwithstanding  great 
material  progress  and  external  development,  the  inner 

49 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

life  of  man  was  at  its  lowest  ebb.  Manhood  was  sub- 
servient to  materialism.  Character  had  yielded  to  the 
lust  of  power  or  wealth. 

Jesus  came;  and  what  did  he  do?  Organize  a 
church?  Indirectly,  yes.  Preach  a  new  and  marvelous 
doctrine?  Yes.  But  he  did  much  more  than  either. 
He  sowed  the  seed  of  divine _  character  in  the  world. 
Right  into  the  midst  of  earth's  foulness  and  sin  he 
dropped  it;  and  it  seemed  to  be  lost.  But  was  it  lost? 
Not  by  any  means !  It  was  only  hidden  in  the  soil.  At 
once  there  began  the  development  of  a  new  spiritual 
consciousness  in  the  race.  Imperceptibly  at  first,  but 
none  the  less  really  and  irresistibly,  new  ideals  of  life 
and  duty  sprang  up  and  gradually  asserted  their  sway 
over  the  minds  of  men  everywhere.  New  conceptions 
of  God  and  of  man ;  new  conceptions  of  the  duty  of 
man  towards  God  in  worship  and  in  service,  of  the  duty 
of  man  towards  man  in  society,  of  the  duties  of  nations 
towards  each  other;  new  impulses  towards  mental  cul- 
ture, towards  moral  elevation,  towards  material  advance- 
ment— these  and  many  similar  evidences  of  a  new 
growth  began  to  reveal  themselves. 

The  early  Church,  as  soon  as  it  was  deprived  of  the 
immediate  counsel  of  Jesus  and  his  apostles,  was  little 
better  in  many  respects  than  the  heathenism  by  which 
it  was  surrounded.  The  doctrinal  disputes  of  the  syna- 
gogue were  introduced  into  the  conclaves  of  the  Church. 
The  methods  and  spirit  of  the  heathen  persecutors  were 
adopted  by  intolerant  disciples.  Many  times  the  moral 
life  of  recognized  Christians  exhibited  no  marked  su- 
periority to  that  of  the  unchristian  world.  Yet  the  divine 
germ  had  burst  its  covering  and  was  steadily  shooting 
up  into  the  life  of  the  race. 

Though  the  movement  has  been  in  every  age  imper- 
ceptible, the  growth  of  the  tree  has  been  measured  from 
time  to  time,  and  these  measurements  form  the  great 

50 


THE       MUSTARD       SEED 

epochs  of  history.  The  abrogation  of  sacrifices  marks 
almost  the  first  stage  of  that  growth;  the  granting  of 
the  Magna  Charta  marks  another  stage;  the  great 
Protestant  Reformation,  another;  the  overthrow  of  the 
system  of  human  slavery,  another ;  and  so  on.  We  some- 
times think  there  is  no  growth  in  the  character  of  the 
race;  but  if  we  note  the  level  at  widely  separated  in- 
tervals we  must  be  convinced  not  merely  that  there  is 
growth,  but  that  it  is  marvelous  in  its  greatness. 

Who  can  estimate,  for  example,  the  difference  be- 
tween ancient  tyranny  and  modern  constitutional  gov- 
ernment? What  a  measureless  stride  from  the  Cru- 
sades to  the  spirit  of  modern  missions!  How  far  the 
purpose  and  method  of  the  Arbitration  Court  at  The 
Hague  towers  above  that  of  the  Holy  Alliance  at  the 
opening  of  the  nineteenth  century!  How  much  grander 
the  meaning  embodied  in  the  Red  Cross  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  than  in  that  of  the  twelfth  century,  or  in 
the  socialism  of  our  time  than  in  the  scholasticism  of 
the  Middle  Ages !  The  mustard-seed  has  already  become 
a  tree,  and  that  tree  is  daily  growing  and  sending  its 
branches  in  shelter  over  the  world.  The  race  is  attain- 
ing the  Christly  character,  slowly  it  may  be,  but  none 
the  less  surely  and  blessedly. 

"The  mustard  seed,"  says  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott,  in  his 
Evolution  of  Religion,  "is  growing  to  be  the  greatest 
of  all  herbs;  but  it  grows  in  all  directions;  some 
branches  pushing  upwards  to  higher  planes ;  some  grow- 
ing only  further  away  from  the  original  stock,  different 
therefrom  in  apparent  direction,  yet  the  same  in 
nature  and  fruit;  some  growing  downward  and  earth- 
ward ; — yet  the  whole  higher  in  its  highest  parts,  grander 
in  its  proportions,  and  more  complexly  diversified  in  its 
structure  than  when  the  Nazarene  cast  the  seed  into  the 
ground  by  the  shores  of  Gennesaret.  Then,  a  solitary 
physician,  healing  a  few  score  of  halt  and  lame  and  blind 

51 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

and  lepers  by  a  touch  or  a  word, — ^now,  throughout  all 
lands  which  his  presence  has  made  holy,  hospitals  for 
every  form  of  disease  known  among  mankind;  then,  a 
single  feeding  of  five  thousand  men,  besides  women  and 
children,  seated  in  serried  ranks  upon  the  ground, — now, 
an  organized  benefaction,,  which,  through  consecrated 
channels  of  commerce,  so  distributes  to  the  needs  of 
man  that  in  a  truly  Christian  community  a  famine  is 
well-nigh  impossible ;  then,  a  single  teacher,  speaking  to 
a  single  congregation  on  the  hillside  and  illustrating  the 
simplest  principles  of  the  moral  life, — now,  unnumbered 
followers,  so  instructing  men  concerning  God,  duty, 
love,  life,  that  not  only  does  every  nation  hear  the  truth 
in  a  dialect  which  it  can  understand,  but  every  temper- 
ament also  in  a  language  of  intellect  and  emotion  un- 
consciously adapted  to  its  special  need." 

But  the  end  is  not  yet.  The  world  has  not,  even  in 
our  day,  attained  to  the  fulness  of  its  divine  growth. 
The  conscience  of  the  race  still  permits  much  that  is 
evil,  much  that  is  unchristly.  The  all-powerful  nations 
still  stand  with  folded  hands  and  witness  the  slaughter 
of  helpless  innocence  by  brutal  tyranny.  Christendom 
lets  political  interests  outweigh  the  needs  of  suffering 
humanity.  Christian  commerce  is  still  based  upon  the 
principle  of  selfish  and  soulless  competition.  Christian 
men  still  pile  up  their  millions  and  clothe  themselves  in 
purple  and  fine  linen,,  while  their  brothers  lie  at  their 
very  gates  in  rags;  and  a  Christian  public  praises  their 
thrift.  Formal  slavery  is  done  away  with,  but  there  are 
still  multitudes  who  are  in  actual  bondage  to  toil  and  pov- 
erty, with  no  opportunity  for  higher  mental  culture  and 
soul  growth.  The  cries  of  suffering  and  wrong  are  yet 
to  be  heard  in  our  most  Christian  lands,  calling  for  new 
and  broader  interpretations  of  the  gospel  in  daily  life. 

The  tree  is  large.  The  fowls  of  the  air  lodge  already 
in  its  branches.    But  it  may  grow  much  more,  must  grow 

52 


THE       MUSTARD       SEED 

much  more,  till  nations  and  societies  and  communities 
are  as  truly  Christian  as  individuals ;  it  must  grow  until 
politics  are  as  pure  and  commerce  as  unselfish  as  re- 
ligion; until  men  make  laws  and  buy  and  sell  goods  and 
study  science  and  even  pursue  pleasure  from  the  same 
motive  which  lured  Jesus  to  Gethsemane  and  Calvary, 
namely,  to  build  up  Christly  character  in  men  and  to 
bring  in  the  reign  of  the  kingdom  of  God  upon  earth. 
It  must  grow  till  the  mission  of  the  Christ  is  recognized 
as  the  one  mission  of  every  son  of  man,  until  every 
human  life  becomes  a  true  incarnation  of  God. 

"The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  grain  of  mus- 
tard seed."  How  often  do  we  complain  of  the  little- 
ness of  our  lives,  the  limitations  of  our  influence !  We 
make  these  the  excuse  for  all  manner  of  uselessness 
and  failure.  We  draw  back  from  duty  on  the  ground 
that  we  have  no  great  opportunities,  no  extraordinary 
talents.  We  persuade  ourselves  that  on  this  account 
nothing  is  required  of  us.  But  every  one  has  small  op- 
portunities, a  few  talents.  These  God  has  given  to  us, 
and  he  would  have  us  cast  them  into  the  earth  like 
the  tiny  mustard-seed,  that  they  may  grow  and  become 
great.  These  little  things  are  possessed  of  a  divine  life. 
Consecrate  them  to  God,  use  them  faithfully  in  his  ser- 
vice and  according  to  his  laws,  and  they  will  expand 
and  multiply  beyond  our  largest  imaginings.  Infinite 
possibilities  lie  hidden  within  them. 

Would  you  know  the  real  value  of  life?  Learn  the 
significance  of  little  things.  God  does  not  give  us  trees 
full  grown.  He  gives  us  the  seed,  and  every  seed  is  the 
repository  of  infinite  possibilities.  As  a  little  tempta- 
tion may  betray  the  soul  and  by  gradual  development 
lead  at  last  to  monstrous  sin  and  the  complete  wreckage 
of  character,  so  a  minute  seed  of  good,  carefully  nour- 
ished and  cultivated,  may  spring  up  and  bring  forth 
fruit  unto  everlasting  life.  A  cup  of  cold  water  given  in 
the  name  and  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  may  awaken  the  dor- 

53 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

mant  life  in  the  human  heart  and  become  the  source 
of  a  transformed  character. 

Then, — 

"Scorn  not  the  slightest  word  or  deed. 
Nor  deem  it  void  of  power ; 
There's   fruit  in  each  wind-wafted   seed, 
That  waits  its  natal  hour. 

"A  whispered  word  may  touch  the  heart. 
And  call  it  back  to  life; 
A  look  of  love  bid  sin  depart, 
And  still  unholy  strife. 

"No  act  falls  fruitless;  none  can  tell 
How  vast  its  power  may  be; 
Nor  what  results  infolded  dwell 
Within  it  silently." 


54 


The  Influence  of 
Character 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Influence  of 
Character 

THE    LEAVEN 

Matt.   13:33;     Luke  13:20,  21 
Text. — "//  ivas  all  leavened."'' — Matt.   13:33 

THE  spiritual  ideals  of  most  men  would  find 
a  fitting  type  in  the  gold  or  the  diamond. 
Jesus  never  employs  them  for  figures.  His 
chosen  symbols  of  Christian  character  are 
salt,  light,  leaven.  Do  you  see  the  differ- 
ence ?  The  human  ideal  emphasizes  value  or  beauty ;  the 
divine  ideal  lays  the  stress  upon  power. 

Gold,  what  is  it?  A  standard  of  value;  an  emblem 
of  purity  and  worth ;  the  most  precious  of  metals,  sought 
with  equal  persistence  for  coinage  and  for  ornament. 
What  is  the  diamond?  A  gem  of  priceless  worth  and 
unrivaled  beauty.  The  gold  and  the  diamond  are  thus 
fitting  symbols  of  purity  and  value;  but  they  are  also 
types  of  selfishness  or  want  of  power. 

For  ages  untold  diamonds  have  lain  buried  in  the 
mines  of  Brazil  and  South  Africa,  and  the  sparkling 
grains  of  gold  have  mingled  in  the  sands  of  California 
and  the  Yukon  Valley ;  yet  in  all  these  ages  no  smallest 
particle  of  sand  has  been  changed  by  the  contact,  no 
atom  of  rock  has  felt  any  influence  from  the  metal  or 
the  gem  to  transform  its  nature  or  increase  its  value. 
Age  after  age  they  lie  there,  precious  metal  and  worth- 
less sand,  priceless  jewel  and  profitless  rock,  side  by  side, 
the  sand  and  the  rock  no  whit  better  for  the  fellowship. 

57 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

Does  not  that  well  represent  much  of  the  religion  that 
has  claimed  the  attention  of  men?  Does  it  not  repre- 
sent too  truthfully  much  of  the  religion  that  passes  cur- 
rent under  the  name  of  Christian?  Have  we  not 
churches  pure  as  the  gold,  priceless  as  the  diamond, 
beautiful  congregations  of  beautiful  people,  that  are  ab- 
solutely without  influence  in  the  world,  as  cold  and  ex- 
clusive as  they  are  pure  and  refined?  Not  such  was 
Jesus'  ideal  of  Christian  life  and  character.  He  says, 
"The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  leaven,  which  a 
woman  took,  and  hid  in  three  measures  of  meal,  till  it 
was  all  leavened." 

There  is  a  picture  of  The  InHuence  of  Character, 

What  is  leaven?  Any  substance  that  produces  fer- 
mentation. The  name  is  very  indefinite,  and  no  one 
cares  what  the  exact  substance  is.  The  precise  material 
of  which  it  is  composed  may  vary  indefinitely.  The  ef- 
fect which  it  produces  is  the  one  matter  of  importance, 
/it  is  a  transforming  force.N, 

The  parable  of  The  Mustard  Seed  fixed  our  attention 
upon  the  object  itself,  that  is,  upon  the  growing  plant, 
and  so  led  us  directly  to  the  growing  spiritual  reality, 
the  Christly  character.  The  entire  significance  of  the 
picture  centered  upon  that.  But  in  the  parable  now  be- 
fore us  we  do  not  know  what  the  material  substance  is. 
We  only  know  its  effect.  In  fact,  the  substance  itself, 
whatever  it  is,  is  soon  lost,  absorbed  in  the  larger  mass. 
The  leaven  was  hidden  in  three  measures  of  meal  till  the 
meal  was  all — what?  Leaven?  No,  Till  it  was  all 
leavened.  The  noun  gives  place  to  a  verb.  Matter  is 
made  subordinate  to  force.  The  worker  is  for  the  time 
overshadowed  by  its  work.  We  may  therefore  dismiss 
all  questions  about  the  woman,  the  meal,  the  three  meas- 
j  ures,  and  even  the  general  significance  of  leaven,  and 
J  concentrate  our  thought  upon  the  one  simple  idea, 
influence. 

Character  is  the  greatest  of  moral  forces.     No  true 

58 


THE LEAVEN 

character  can  exist  among  men  without  exerting  a  clearly 
defined  and  helpful  influence.  Men  of  genuine  excel- 
lence in  every  station  in  life,  men  of  integrity,  of  probity, 
of  high  principle,  of  sterling  honesty  of  purpose,  com- 
mand the  spontaneous  homage  of  mankind.  It  is  natural 
to  believe  in  such  men  and  to  imitate  them.  All  that  is 
good  in  the  world  is  upheld  by  them,  and  without  their 
presence  in  it  the  world  would  not  be  worth  living  in. 
Genius  commands  admiration,  wisdom  or  learning  may 
excite  wonder,  power  may  compel  outward  submission, 
wealth  may  allure  flattery,  but  character  alone  secures 
respect  and  exerts  a  transforming  influence  upon  men. 

"Every  true  man,"  says  Emerson,  "is  a  cause,  a 
country,  and  an  age;  requires  infinite  spaces  and  num- 
bers and  time  fully  to  accomplish  his  design; — ^and  pos- 
terity seem  to  follow  his  steps  as  a  train  of  clients.  A 
man,  Csesar,  is  born,  and  for  ages  after  we  have  a  Roman 
empire.  .  .  .  And  all  history  resolves  itself  very  easily  into 
the  biography  of  a  few  stout  and  earnest  persons." 

The  history  of  all  human  progress  is  but  the  his- 
tory of  the  working  and  influence  of  character  in  the 
gradual  maturing  of  the  race  life.  Character  is  always 
and  everywhere  the  measure  of  a  man's  power  and 
of  a  man's  possibilities  in  the  molding  of  his  fellows. 

How  vast  an  influence,  for  example,  has  emanated 
from  the  character  of  that  noble  man,  Dr.  Thomas  Ar- 
nold of  Rugby ! — an  influence  that  was  felt  in  the  school 
long  after  his  death.  His  character  seemed  to  have  in- 
fused itself  into  the  very  fiber  of  the  institution,  and  to 
have  continued  to  exert  its  power  for  many  years.  "His 
very  presence,"  says  his  biographer,  "seemed  to  create 
a  new  spring  of  health  and  vigor  within  his  pupils,  and 
to  give  to  life  an  interest  and  an  elevation  which  re- 
mained with  them  long  after  they  had  left  him,  and 
dwelt  so  habitually  in  their  thoughts,  as  a  living  image, 
that,  when  death  had  taken  him  away,  the  bond  appear- 
ed to  be  still  unbroken,  and  the  sense  of  separation  al- 

59 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

most  lost  in  the  still  deeper  sense  of  a  life  and  union 
indestructible.  And  thus  it  was  that  Dr.  Arnoid  train- 
ed a  host  of  manly  and  noble  characters  who  spread 
the  influence  of  his  example  in  all  parts  of  the  world." 

Of  Dugald  Stewart,  also,  it  has  been  said  that  he 
breathed  the  love  of  virtue  into  whole  generations  of 
pupils.  Benjamin  Franklin,  too,  while  in  London,  by 
the  simple  force  of  his  personal  dignity  and  truly  re- 
fined and  lofty  character,  reformed  the  manners  of  the 
entire  establishment  with  which  he  was  connected.  The 
godly  character  of  Edward  Payson  was  a  more  effective 
and  lasting  power  for  good  than  even  his  eloquent 
preaching. 

Who  has  not  seen  illustrations  without  number  of  the 
influence  of  independent,  aggressive,  active  character, 
for  either  good  or  ill?  How  many  lives  have  been 
ruined,  how  many  communities  have  been  corrupted,  by 
contact  with  some  individual  of  positively  low  or  wicked 
character !  And  what  may  not  one  noble  character  and 
consecrated  life  effect  in  purifying  and  uplifting  other 
lives  ? 

Captain  John  Brown  once  said  to  Emerson,  "For  a 
settler  in  a  new  country,  one  good,  believing  man  is 
worth  a  hundred,  nay,  worth  a  thousand  men  without 
character.  His  example  is  so  contagious  that  all  other 
men  are  directly  and  beneficially  influenced  by  him,  and 
he  insensibly  elevates  and  lifts  them  up  to  his  own 
standard  of  energetic  activity." 

True,  unquestionably  true !  Every  page  of  history 
attests  its  truth.  What  has  made  the  difference  that  we 
see  between  New  England  and  Mexico  to-day?  The 
difference  in  prosperity,  in  intelligence,  in  enterprise,  in 
moral  and  social  life,  whence  does  it  spring?  Whence., 
indeed,  but  from  the  influence  of  the  religious  refugees 
in  the  one  case  and  the  gold-hunting  adventurers  in  the 
other  who  first  settled  the  two  portions  of  our  continent  ? 
What    marks    the    present    difference    between    Mas- 

60 


■sKssass 


THE LEAVEN 

sachusetts  and  Virginia?  Is  it  not  the  difference  in 
character  between  Puritan  and  Cavalier  continuing  to 
manifest  itself?  Why  do  we  find  such  a  diversity  of 
character  in  the  different  cities  on  this  continent,  Boston, 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  New  Orleans,  Montreal,  Que- 
bec? Religiously,  morally,  intellectually,  socially,  in 
enterprise  and  in  spirit  they  differ  to-day  pretty  much 
as  their  founders  differed  generations  ago.  It  is  the  in- 
fluence of  personal  character  perpetuated. 

If  we  study  the  characteristics  of  the  different  branches 
of  the  Christian  Church,  we  find  that  they  are  not  to  be 
explained  entirely  as  the  outgrowth  of  diverse  creeds 
and  methods.  They  embody  to  a  large  degree  the 
characters  of  their  early  leaders.  Doctrinal  differences 
are  becoming  confused.  It  is  no  easy  matter  in  modern 
times  to  draw  hard  and  fast  lines  between  Arminianism 
and  Calvinism  as  forms  of  belief,  or  even  between  or- 
thodoxy and  heterodoxy.  But  Wesleyanism  and  Cal- 
vinism still  stand  out  very  clearly  as  types  of  character. 
The  personal  influence  and  character  of  an  Augustine,  a 
Hildebrand,  a  Zinzendorf,  a  Wesley,  a  Calvin,  or  a 
Whitefield  abide  with  us  long  after  his  peculiar  teach- 
ings have  been  forgotten  or  discarded. 

The  influence  of  character  may  not  always  be  clearly 
traceable,  nevertheless  that  influence  always  makes  it- 
self felt,  and  it  reaches  farther  than  we  are  wont  to 
believe,  changing  other  characters,  molding  other  lives, 
not  only  as  they  come  into  immediate  contact  with  it, 
but  even  when  they  are  far  removed  in  distance  and  time 
or  belong  to  a  later  generation.  It  is  precisely  like  the 
leaven  which  affects  not  only  the  particles  of  meal  con- 
tiguous to  it,  but  through  these  the  particles  farthest 
removed. 

The  power  of  Christianity  lies  in  this  all-pervading  in- 
fluence of  character.  Not  the  mere  teaching  of  Jesus, 
not  a  new  system  of  religious  philosophy  which  he  in- 
troduced, won  the  hearts  of  men  and  turned  them  to 

61 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

righteousness.  It  was  the  character  of  Jesus  that  con- 
quered human  hearts  and  transformed  human  Hves.  And 
you  remember  how  he  promised  the  same  power  to  his 
followers.  He  said,  "Ye  shall  receive  power," — when? 
When  ye  have  learned  my  doctrine?  No.  When  ye  are 
proficient  in  my  methods  ?  No.  "Ye  shall  receiv.-  power, 
when  the  Holy  Spirit  is  come  upon  you."  In  other 
words,  Ye  shall  have  power  when  ye  begin  to  develop 
the  Christly  character. 

The  leaven  assimilates  the  particles  of  meal  to  itself. 
While  not  changing  the  substance  of  the  meal,  the  leav- 
en imparts  to  it  the  peculiar  quality  of  force  embodied 
in  itself,  without  losing  any  part  of  its  own  peculiar 
property.  So  Jesus,  coming  into  contact  with  humanity, 
imparts  to  it  his  own  nature.  When  he  touched  the 
leper,  he  was  not  defiled,  but  communicated  his  own  pure 
and  healthy  life  to  the  diseased  man.  When  he  took 
our  human  nature  upon  him,  he  was  not  contaminated 
with  its  inherited  sinfulness,  but  instead  he  became  the 
source  of  a  new  moral  health  for  the  race. 

See  the  city  of  Corinth  steeped  in  unnamable  vice  and 
gangrened  with  moral  rottenness,  till  the  leaven  of 
Christian  character  touched  and  transformed  many  of 
its  inhabitants,  making  them  pure  and  true,  and  win- 
ning for  them  from  their  fellows  the  title  of  "saint," 
Nor  is  that  a  solitary  or  even  extraordinary  instance. 
The  history  of  Christian  missions  repeats  the  story  again 
and  again.  The  influence  of  that  pure  and  holy  charac- 
ter has  wrought  a  similar  change  in  Madagascar,  in 
Fiji,  in  Hawaii,  and  in  many  islands  of  the  Pacific.  In 
our  own  land  it  has  entered  many  a  Five  Points  and 
has  brought  order  and  peace  and  decency  where  before 
was  only  lowest  vice  and  most  abject  wretchedness.  In- 
deed, all  corrective  agencies  that  are  at  work  success- 
fully upon  the  moral  life  of  men  whether  at  home  or 
abroad  spring  from  this  leavening  power  of  Christly 
character,  which  is  Christ  himself  perpetually  incarnate. 

62 


THE LEAVEN 

The  same  influence  has  taken  hold  of  all  the  mani- 
fold departments  of  our  complex  life,  and  has  given  to 
all  new  impulses  and  higher  aspirations.  Character 
affects  intellect,  it  affects  taste,  it  affects  even  the  physi- 
cal man.  The  scientific  researches  and  discoveries  of 
our  times  are  the  manifestations  of  a  growing  intellectual 
life  stimulated  by  the  Christly  character.  Our  advanc- 
ing social  institutions,  our  free  and  enlightened  govern- 
ments, our  unbounded  literary  activities,  our  countless 
individual  comforts  and  amenities,  our  sacred  home  life, 
our  universal  education — all  these  and  many  other 
things  that  we  esteem  purely  secular,  but  which  form  a 
large  part  of  our  modern  progress,  are  directly  trace- 
able to  the  effervescent  working  of  the  Christly  charac- 
ter in  the  race. 

We  often  urge  upon  disciples  the  universal  duty  of 
preaching  the  gospel.  That  is  well;  but  there  is  a  duty 
far  more  important.  Each  disciple  should  be  a  center  of 
Christian  influence.  The  character  of  every  follower  of 
Jesus  should  be  contagious.  It  should  affect  positively 
every  other  character  with  which  it  comes  in  contact. 
In  fact,  this  is  the  way,  the  only  way,  in  which  leaven 
spreads.  It  goes  through  the  meal  particle  by  particle. 
The  little  leaven  in  the  center  of  the  mass  cannot  direct- 
ly affect  the  meal  at  a  distance  from  itself.  It  simply 
leavens  the  particles  next  to  itself,  and  these  in  turn  be- 
come leavening  influences  which  act  upon  their  neigh- 
bors, and  so  the  process  is  continued  till  at  length  the 
particles  most  remote  from  the  center  are  touched  and 
transformed. 

The  character  of  Jesus  could  not  directly  touch  the 
lives  of  all  men.  It  touched  twelve,  seventy,  a  hundred 
and  twenty,  or  more  hearts,  and  changed  them  into  the 
likeness  of  the  Saviour;  and  that  was  all.  But  these, 
being  leavened,  exerted  an  influence  upon  others.  An- 
drew, being  leavened,  touched  Peter  and  leavened  him. 
Jesus  leavened  Philip,  and   Philip  leavened  Nathanael. 

63 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

So  the  influence  has  spread  from  heart  to  heart  and 
from  age  to  age.  To-day  it  becomes  your  duty  and  mine 
to  disseminate  this  influence  to  those  particles  of  hu- 
manity that  He  nearest  to  us.  Every  man,  woman  and 
child  with  whom  we  come  in  contact  should  receive 
from  us  something  of  this  contagious  spirit  of  the  living 
Christ. 

It  is  said  of  Jesus  that,  at  one  time  as  the  multi- 
tudes crowded  about  him  to  touch  him,  "As  many  as 
touched  him  were  made  whole."  There  is  the  thought 
of  our  parable  in  the  concrete.  There  was  the  conta- 
gious influence  of  his  divine  health  of  body  making 
everybody  well  by  mere  contact,  though  no  word  was 
spoken.  That  is  what  the  kingdom  of  heaven  means 
for  us,  does  through  us.  When  it  is  set  up  in  our 
hearts,  when  we  have  come  to  understand  the  true  ideal 
of  Christian  character,  we  shall  think  of  it,  not  as  some- 
thing to  be  possessed  and  enjoyed,  but  as  something  to 
be  continually  imparted,  as  something  that  ought  to  bless 
all  with  whom  we  associate.  If  we  are  worthy  dis- 
ciples of  our  Master,  it  will  be  true  of  us  as  of  Jesus 
that  as  many  as  touch  us  will  be  made  whole.  Our 
lives  will  be  potent.  Apart  from  all  words  that  we 
speak  and  all  merely  external  acts  that  we  perform, 
there  will  be  a  continuous  radiation  of  silent  and  often 
unconscious  influence.  Wherever  we  go  we  shall  create 
an  atmosphere  of  Christliness.  Souls  will  be  stimulated 
to  new  endeavors ;  lives  will  be  made  ashamed  of  un- 
worthiness  and  led  to  loftier  aims.  Yes,  even  the  phys- 
ical life  will  be  stimulated  and  strengthened.  Christly 
character  has  not  yet  wholly  lost  its  power  over  bodily 
disease,  though  the  Church  has  relegated  that  power  in 
great  measure  to  fanatics  and  extremists.  I  once  heard 
it  said  of  a  Christian  physician  by  a  patient,  "I  always 

like  to  have  Dr. call.  I  am  stronger  for  the  visit  even 

when  he  gives  me  no  medicine,  for  there  is  something 
about  the  very  atmosphere  and  spirit  of  the  man  that 

64 


THE LEAVEN 

thrills  me  with  new  life."  Had  the  Christian  Church 
held  fast  to  her  privilege  in  this  matter,  had  she  main- 
tained intact  the  "faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints," 
not  as  a  matter  of  mere  creed  statement  and  orthodoxy 
but  of  real  trust  in  the  power  of  the  living  Christ,  she 
might  not  in  these  later  days  be  troubled  by  the  schis- 
matic extremes  of  the  "Faith  Cure"  and  "Christian 
Science." 

One  thought  I  have  not  yet  touched  upon  which  per- 
haps demands  a  passing  notice.  It  is  this:  Leaven  is 
in  itself  the  essence  of  corruption.  In  nearly  every  pass- 
age of  Scripture  where  mentioned  it  is  a  symbol  of  evil. 
Strange,  is  it  not,  that  this  same  substance  should  be 
chosen  as  an  emblem  of  the  true  life?  What  does  it 
mean?  You  cannot  eat  leaven.  It  does  not  contain  the 
properties  that  sustain  life.  Nevertheless  it  serves  a  very 
important  purpose  in  rendering  more  palatable,  possibly 
more  wholesome  also,  the  bread  that  we  eat  and  by 
which  life  is  nourished.  Without  the  leaven  our  bread 
would  be  poor  indeed.  It  is  the  power  of  something, 
in  itself  far  from  perfect,  to  improve  something  else, 
that  symbolizes  genuine  discipleship. 

This  quality  of  corruption  in  the  leaven  has  proved 
a  stumbling-block  to  an  occasional  expositor  who  has 
attempted  to  square  every  element  in  the  parable  with 
some  divine  teaching  and  to  deduce  a  special  lesson  from 
each  distinct  phase  of  the  picture.  Such  expositors 
have  quite  overlooked  the  fact  that  Jesus  makes  no  refer- 
ence to  the  substance  of  the  leaven,  but  only  to  its  per- 
vading and  transforming  influence.  That  is  the  only 
quality  of  the  leaven  that  he  brings  out  in  the  parable, 
and  it  is  evidently  the  only  quality  that  he  had 
in  mind  at  the  time  of  speaking.  The  kingdom 
of  heaven  is  like  leaven  in  the  one  particular  only, 
i.  e.,  its  influence.  The  worst  character  is  want  of 
character.     Mere  negative  do-nothing-ism,  though  it  be 

65 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

spotless,  has  nothing  Christlike  or  heavenly  about  it. 
True  character  is  always  positive  and  strongly  aggres- 
sive. 

Have  you  never  wondered  at  the  fascination  that  is 
often  exerted  by  evil  lives?  We  read  the  story  of  some 
notorious  sinner  and  before  we  are  aware,  although  we 
know  him  to  be  a  rascal,  we  find  ourselves  admiring  his 
character.  Probably  few  persons  have  ever  read  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost  without  feeling  a  certain  respect  for  Sa- 
tan, in  spite  of  the  great  poet's  effort  to  make  him  the 
impersonation  of  all  evil.  Why  is  this  ?  Is  it  not  because 
of  the  positiveness,  because  of  the  aggressive  force 
that  reveals  itself  in  the  delineation  of  the  archfiend's 
character?  Such  positiveness  is  fascinating  even  when 
found  in  connection  with  traits  the  most  unworthy. 
How  much  more  when  allied  to  upright  character  and 
noble  purpose  does  it  enhance  their  value! 

Time  has  been,  I  am  not  sure  that  it  is  now  wholly 
past,  when  the  ideal  of  sainthood  has  been  represented  as 
weak  and  negative  in  character.  Some  of  us  still  find 
it  difficult  to  get  rid  of  the  notion  that  the  model  Chris- 
tian is  a  namby-pamby  sort  of  a  person  lacking  the 
strongest  and  most  virile  elements  of  the  manly  charac- 
ter. The  ghost  of  the  old  Sunday-school  book  hero 
occasionally  haunts  our  present-day  religion,  and  while 
we  consider  him  a  pattern  of  goodness,  we  reserve  our 
admiration  and  real  worship  for  others  less  saintly. 

The  figure  of  the  leaven  ought  to  have  made  such 
weak  ideals  forever  impossible.  It  brands  all  moral  ef- 
feminacy as  unchristian.  It  imprints  the  stamp  of  con- 
demnation upon  mere  negative  goodness.  From  the  other 
parables  we  learn  that  the  heavenly  character  must 
always  be  pure  and  beautiful.  In  and  of  itself  it  is  a 
priceless  treasure,  a  jewel  of  surpassing  value ;  yet,  after 
all,  the  most  perfect  character  utterly  fails  in  its  mission 
if  it  does  not  exert  a  potent  influence  upon  others. 

Even  the   spotless   purity   and   unequaled   beauty  of 

66 


THE LEAVEN 

Jesus'  own  character  would  have  been  absolutely  worth- 
less had  there  not  gone  forth  from  him  that  perpetually 
divine  influence  which  made  itself  felt  by  all  who  came 
to  him,  and  which  has  continued  to  make  itself  felt  all 
through  the  ages.  Consequently  when  the  Master 
sought  for  types  of  discipleship  he  seldom  took  things 
of  intrinsic  value  like  the  gold,  the  diamond,  or  even  the 
meal.  Instead  of  these,  salt,  light,  leaven  are  his  cho- 
sen symbols.  Does  he  therefore  mean  to  belittle  the 
value  of  character  in  itself?  Not  at  all;  but  he  would 
emphasize  the  paramount  importance  of  influence. 
Purity  is  vital;  for  the  pure  in  heart,  and  they  alone, 
shall  see  God.  Moral  beauty  and  symmetry  are  emi- 
nently to  be  desired;  but  contagion  is  more  than  these. 
To  be  noble  is  good  so  far  as  it  goes ;  to  ennoble  others 
goes  farther  and  is  infinitely  better.  To  keep  oneself 
unspotted  from  the  world  is  a  worthy  aim  when  it  goes 
hand  in  hand  with  the  higher  aim  to  cleanse  the  world 
itself  of  some  of  its  spots. 

Is  not  this  a  very  distinct  and  lofty  ideal  of  character 
that  Jesus  sets  before  us  in  the  parable  of  The  Leaven? 
To  many  Christians  the  great  end  of  religion  seems  to 
be  the  salvation  of  their  own  souls.  Others  talk  of  a 
"higher  Christian  life";  but  even  that  is  a  self-absorbed 
struggle  for  purity  and  sanctification.  Now  the  Master 
would  not  have  us  neglect  these  aims,  but  he  would 
have  us  think  of  them,  not  as  ends,  but  as  means  to  an 
end  far  greater  than  either.  He  bids  us  cultivate  the 
Christly  character  for  the  sake  of  others,  save  self  in 
order  to  save  the  world,  seek  the  fulness  of  the  heaven- 
ly life  in  order  that  we  may  become  centers  of  heaven- 
ly light  and  joy  and  power,  transforming  all  about  us, 
until  the  kingdom  of  God  shall  come  not  alone  in  our 
hearts  hut  in  all  the  earth. 


67 


The  Value  of 
Character 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Value  of 
Character 

THE  TREASURE 

Matt.   13:44 

Text. — '^The  kingdom  of  hewuen  is  like  unto  a  treasure.  " — 

Matt.   13:44  (1st  cl.) 

E  commonly  reckon  wealth  in  dollars 
and  cents.  We  account  a  man  rich 
when  he  controls  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands or  millions  of  dollars.  If  his  in- 
come be  small  we  call  him  poor.  Yet 
money  itself  is  not  wealth,  nor  can  it  always  secure 
wealth  for  its  possessor.  At  best  it  is  simply  an  in- 
strument for  the  convenient  exchange  or  transfer  of 
wealth.  Misers  have  perished  in  rags  and  starvation 
while  they  possessed  thousands  of  shining  coins  safe- 
ly hidden  away  in  their  coffers.  Miserably  poor  was 
that  one  who  fell  down  in  the  streets  of  Herculaneum 
fatally  overburdened  by  the  very  gold  which  he  was 
seeking  to  rescue  from  the  grasp  of  the  fiery  storm  \ 
rich  beyond  compare  the  possessor  of  a  few  pence 
with  contentment,  peace,  freedom,  a  pure  life  and  a 
clear  conscience. 

Time  was  when  men  supposed  the  wealth  of  nations  or 
of  individuals  to  consist  in  the  amount  of  gold,  silver, 
or  other  precious  metals  in  their  possession.  But  Adam 
Smith,  the  father  of  modern  economic  science,  exposed 
the  fallacy  of  this  notion,  and  banished  it  forever  from 
the  realm  of  intelligent  thought. 

The  wealth  of  nations  is  represented  by  things  far 

71 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

different  from  precious  metal.  The  wealth  of  this  na- 
tion, for  example,  may  be  gaged  much  more  accurate- 
ly by  our  wheat  and  cotton  crops,  by  our  libraries  and 
public  schools,  by  our  well-managed  railroads,  our  free 
institutions,  and  our  comfortable  homes,  than  by  the 
amount  of  bullion  in  our  national  treasury.  By  the 
same  token  it  is  not  stocks  and  bonds,  not  wages  nor 
interest  money,  that  measures  the  wealth  of  the  individ- 
ual, but  the  power  to  satisfy  personal  needs,  to  obtain 
food  when  hungry,  to  secure  clothing  when  cold  or 
naked,  to  furnish  that  which  shall  meet  every  need  of 
the  being,  body,  mind  and  soul. 

Satisfaction  is  the  ultimate  measure  of  wealth — the 
satisfaction  of  need.  That  most  truly  represents 
wealth  which  contributes  most  to  human  satis- 
faction. He  is  richest  whose  needs  are  most 
perfectly  developed  and  most  completely  satisfied.  But 
he  who,  while  possessing  gold  uncounted,  is  unable  to 
obtain  satisfaction  or  contentment  is  poor  indeed. 

This  axiom  of  modern  science  Jesus  announced,  ages 
before  the  birth  of  Adam  Smith,  in  the  words,  "The 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  treasure."  In  these 
words  are  embodied  the  Master's  definition  of  wealth; 
and  the  parable  which  they  introduce  is  a  clear  illustra- 
tion of  his  meaning. 

The  entire  story  centers  upon  the  word  "Treasure." 
Upon  this  word  converge  all  the  radii  of  its  detail. 
From  this  word  we  must  interpret  the  whole.  Here  is 
the  pith  and  essence  of  truth.  All  else  is  incidental  or 
subordinate. 

"A  hidden  treasure,"  says  one.  No,  rather  a  dis- 
covered treasure.  The  word  "hidden"  has  no  bearing 
upon  the  thought  of  the  parable  other  than  to  empha- 
size the  significance  of  the  key-word  "Treasure,"  and  to 
impress  upon  the  hearer  more  deeply  the  fact  of  its 
great  value. 

"The  field,"  says  another,  "what  does  that  represent?" 

72 


THE  TREASURE 

Nothing  in  particular,  I  reply.  The  treasure  must  be 
placed  somewhere.  The  field  is  simply  a  necessary 
background  and  finding  place  for  the  treasure.  In  this 
case  the  field  was  made  for  the  treasure,  not  the  treas- 
ure for  the  field.  Every  picture  must  have  a  back- 
ground ,  and  the  true  artist  will  so  choose  or  arrange  this 
that  it  shall  contribute  to  the  effectiveness  of  the  central 
figure.  If  it  distract  attention  from  that,  it  is  a  fatal 
defect. 

"But  how  about  the  finding?  Was  that  a  matter  of 
chance  ?  And  are  we  to  conclude  that  one  may  stumble  on 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  who  is  not  seeking  it?"  Again 
I  say,  The  treasure,  the  treasure,  that  is  the  important 
thing.  The  man  is  merely  an  instrument  for  discovering 
that  and  placing  it  before  us.  Of  the  method  of  dis- 
covery nothing  is  said ;  therefore  we  may  draw  no  con- 
clusions from  it. 

"What  of  the  conduct  of  the  finder  ?  Was  it  right  for 
him  to  conceal — "  Ah!  there  we  go,  again,  chasing  the 
motes  in  the  sunbeam,  instead  of  using  the  light  which 
the  beam  sheds  to  examine  the  heaven-drawn  picture. 
Whether  right  or  wrong,  the  action  of  the  man  is  per- 
fectly natural  and  true  to  life,  and  the  pains  taken  to 
conceal  the  treasure  is  another  item  of  testimony  to  its 
value.  Also  the  joy  manifested  is  an  added  word  to 
the  same  effect. 

In  short,  all  the  various  details  of  the  parable  are  but 
so  many  lines  of  light  focusing  upon  a  single  point. 
The  hiding,  the  finding,  the  concealment,  the  joy,  the 
sale,  the  purchase — all  these  are  true  to  human  ex- 
perience and  give  life  and  interest  to  the  story.  With- 
out them  it  would  be  no  story  at  all.  Even  Jesus  could 
not  frame  a  parable  about  an  abstract  or  imaginary 
treasure.  Change  the  details  so  as  to  make  every  action 
perfectly  proper  and  independently  instructive,  and  the 
parable  would  be  as  unreal  and  as  insipid  as  many  a 
modern   Sunday-school  book.     But  take  them  just  as 

73 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

they  come  to  us  from  the  lips  of  the  Great  Teacher,  let 
them  interpret  themselves,  and  they  reiterate  in  every 
line  the  cumulative  thought — the  treasure  and  its  value. 

Thus  analyzed,  the  interpretation  of  the  parable  is 
clear.  The  treasure  represents  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
so  says  our  Lord.  And  he  seeks  to  impress  upon  his 
hearers  the  supreme  value  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
In  other  words,  the  parable  sets  forth  in  living  and  con- 
crete fashion,  the  supreme  value  of  Christly  character. 

The  Christly  character  is  like  a  treasure.  That  is  to 
say,  the  Christly  character  is  wealth.  It  is  a  possession 
of  transcendent  value.  It  is  a  mine  of  exhaustless  bless- 
ing. It  is  a  fountain  of  perennial  joy.  In  comparison 
with  this,  all  other  riches  are  as  nothing.  To  obtain 
this  by  the  sacrifice  of  all  else  is  infinite  gain.  It  is  in 
itself  the  embodiment  of  the  highest  and  best  things 
the  heart  can  desire.  Such  character  is  happiness.  Such 
character  is  eternal  life.    Such  character  is  heaven. 

How  we  envy  the  fortunate  individual  who  first  dis- 
covered the  glittering  particles  of  gold  in  Suter's  mill- 
race  in  the  early  days  of  California,  or  how  we  wish  we 
might  have  been  in  place  of  that  one  who  first  noted  the 
oily  surface  of  certain  streams  in  Pennsylvania  and  was 
led  to  bore  for  petroleum !  Do  we?  Do  we?  Why?  Be- 
cause they  were  by  their  good  fortune  enabled  to 
obtain  many  things  that  aflForded  them  pleasure  and  satis- 
faction. But  there  is  another,  unspeakably  more  envi- 
able — the  man  who  has  attained  to  the  Christly  charac- 
ter. For,  after  all,  the  treasure  is  but  a  type,  and  a  very 
imperfect  type  at  that.  Character  is  the  reality,  glorious, 
indestructible. 

The  word  of  Jesus  will  endure  the  most  searching  test 
of  modern  scientific  thought.  Apply  the  test,  if  you 
will,  and  note  how  completely  its  demands  are  met.  I 
have  said  that,  according  to  the  modern  ideal,  satisfac- 
tion is  the  measure  of  wealth.     Now  Christly  character 

74 


THE  T     R     E     A     S     U     R     E 

is  wealth,  because  it  satisfies  human  needs.  It  satisfies 
all  needs,  and  it  satisfies  them  completely. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Christly  character  is  wealth,  be- 
cause it  satisfies  our  physical  or  material  needs.  That 
is  to  say,  it  enables  us  to  satisfy  these.  Have  we  not 
the  promise,  "Be  not  therefore  anxious,  saying,  What 
shall  we  eat?  or,  What  shall  we  drink?  or,  Wherewithal 
shall  we  be  clothed?  .  .  .  But  seek  ye  first  his  kingdom, 
and  his  righteousness ;  and  all  these  things  shall  be  added 
unto  you"?  In  other  words,  Seek  first  and  above  all 
things  else  the  Christly  character;  let  this  be  the  su- 
preme purpose  and  aim  of  your  life,  and  your  bodily 
wants  will  be  abundantly  satisfied. 

If  Christians  only  believed  this  promise !  But  they 
do  not.  It  is  received  by  the  majority  of  disciples  as 
exceedingly  general  and  even  purely  figurative.  Yet  it 
has  proven  itself  true,  literally  true,  in  every  age.  The 
material  riches  of  the  world  to-day  are  in  the  hands  of 
Christian  peoples.  Godly  men  hold  the  purse-strings  of 
the  nations.  To  be  sure,  the  faithful  servants  of  God 
are  not  always  rich  in  money  and  creature  comforts, 
nor  are  the  wicked  always  poor;  but  every  careful  stu- 
dent of  social  problems,  in  this  or  any  other  land,  will 
tell  you  that  it  is  a  most  unusual  thing  to  find  earnest 
Christians  living  in  abject  poverty,  squalor,  or  misery. 
The  low,  the  miserable,  the  discontented,  the  wretched- 
ly poor  and  starving  classes  are  composed  almost  en- 
tirely of  the  ungodly.  And  in  most  cases  their  ungodli- 
ness is  the  direct  cause  of  their  pitiful  condition.  Mate- 
rial improvement  follows  close  upon  the  heels  of  moral 
reform.  In  the  train  of  character  are  diligence  and 
thrift,  the  heralds  of  earthly  prosperity.  Not  one,  but 
many,  are  the  witnesses  who  testify  ■. — 

"I  have  been  young,  and  now  am  old ; 
Yet  have  I  not  seen  the  righteous  forsaken, 
Nor  his  seed  begging  bread." 

75 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

To  stimulate  or  increase  physical  needs  is  one  of  the 
first  results  of  gospel  preaching.  The  pagan  tribe  that 
receives  the  truth  at  once  begins  to  seek  more  and  bet- 
ter things  in  the  way  of  bodily  satisfaction.  There  is 
a  desire  for  better  food  and  clothing,  better  and  more 
comfortable  homes,  pleasanter  surroundings.  The  de- 
mand for  material  things  is  multiplied  manifold.  But  if 
the  demand  is  thus  increased  the  supply  is  increased  far 
more.  The  new  spirit  creates  wants  only  to  satisfy  them 
abundantly.  The  Christianized  nation  always  contributes 
more  to  the  material  possessions  of  the  race  than  it  takes 
from  them.  All  manner  of  bodily  comforts  and  satis- 
factions are  found  among  the  invariable  by-products  of 
Christianity.  They  are  the  never-failing  accompaniments 
if  not  the  direct  results  of  the  development  of  the  Christly 
character. 

Again,  the  Christly  character  is  wealth,  because  it  sat- 
isfies the  intellectual  needs  of  men.  Sanctified  charac- 
ter is  always  a  source  of  new  mental  activity  and  power. 
Moral  elevation  is  a  fountain  of  intellectual  inspira- 
tion. However  we  may  explain  it,  the  fact  is  apparent 
to  all  that  the  secrets  of  the  universe  discover  them- 
selves to  the  godly  mind  when  the  ungodly  question 
them  in  vain.  Even  in  the  matter  of  purely  scientific 
research  or  geographical  discovery  or  mechanical  inven- 
tion the  saying  holds  true,  "The  fear  of  Jehovah  is  the 
beginning  of  wisdom." 

The  intellectual  activity  and  achievement  of  this 
twentieth  century  is  bounded  by  the  same  lines  that 
bound  Christendom.  All  science  and  learnings  all  art 
and  culture  and  refinement  worthy  the  name,  are  to  be 
found  among  the  nominally  Christian  peoples.  To  be 
sure  it  is  fashionable  in  certain  quarters  at  the  present 
time  to  talk  of  the  learning  of  India,  and  to  speak  of 
the  wonderful  achievements  of  the  Oriental  nations  as 
though  these  were  in  some  way  far  in  advance  of  the 
mental  attainments  of  our  Western  peoples.    A  very  b't- 

76 


THE         TREASURE 

tie  study  is  sufficient  to  expose  the  fallacy  of  such 
claims,  and  to  show  the  utter  childishness  of  much  of 
this  lauded  wisdom,  and  the  ineffectiveness  of  all  of  it 
to  uplift  or  satisfy  men. 

And  what  of  individuals?  Who  are  the  leaders  of  the 
intellectual  progress  of  our  time?  Are  they  not,  for  the 
most  part,  Christian  men  and  women?  Our  Agassizs, 
our  Darwins,  and  our  Dawsons  are  men  who  have 
studied  the  creation  in  the  spirit  of  devout  reverence  for 
the  Creator.  Our  Tennysons  and  our  Longfellows,  our 
Brownings  and  our  Whittiers,  have  been  inspired  by  the 
same  reverent  spirit.  True  poetry  of  the  highest  order 
is  not  and  cannot  be  the  product  of  godless  souls. 

Time  would  fail  to  review  the  long  array  of  names 
that  are  famous  in  the  realm  of  art,  of  music,  of  dis- 
covery, of  invention,  that  bear  witness  to  the  influence 
of  character  upon  mind.  Is  not  that  indeed  a  treasure 
of  priceless  value  that  has  given  to  us  the  poems  of  a 
Milton,  the  dramas  of  a  Shakespeare,  the  essays  of  an 
Emerson,  the  writings  of  a  Ruskin,  the  music  of  a 
Beethoven,  or  a  Handel,  the  learning  of  a  hundred  New- 
tons,  the  discoveries  of  a  Columbus,  the  inventions  of 
a  Watt,  a  Stephenson,  a  Morse,  an  Edison,  a  Marconi, 
the  philosophy  of  a  Spencer,  the  beneficent  achievements 
of  a  Howe  or  a  Morton? 

Often  enough  we  may  hear  these  intellectual  prodi- 
gies spoken  of  as  the  fruits  of  Christianity;  but  just 
what  do  we  mean  by  that?  Are  they  the  outgrowth  of 
a  certain  religious  philosophy?  Do  they  find  their  source 
and  inspiration  in  a  peculiar  form  of  religious  teaching 
known  as  Christian?  No.  They  are  the  direct  result 
of  the  formation  and  growth  of  Christly  character  in 
human  hearts.  It  is  character  and  not  mere  teaching  or 
culture  that  lies  at  the  foundation  of  intellectual  prog- 
ress. Men  have  sought  the  kingdom  of  God  and  have 
found  it ;  and  these  things  have  been  added  according  to 
the  promise. 

77 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

The  gospel  of  the  kingdom  is  not  first  of  all  a  gospel 
of  contentment.  It  does  not  make  men  indifferent  to 
natural  desire.  The  rather  does  it  stimulate  desire  and 
aspiration  in  every  right  direction.  Wants  hitherto  un- 
recognized are  awakened  only  to  be  more  than  satis- 
fied. The  Spirit  of  Christ  gives  rise  to  ever  greater 
longings,  and  then  satisfies  them  completely.  It  infi- 
nitely extends  a  man's  horizon,  and  makes  life  more 
truly  worth  the  living.  Under  its  influence  the  concep- 
tion of  life's  possibilities  is  greatly  enlarged,  and  a  godly 
discontent  springs  up  in  the  soul  that  clamors  for  higher 
satisfaction  and  receives  it.  Into  every  little  event  and 
duty  a  deeper  meaning  is  infused,  and  thus  these  are 
rendered  sacred.  Every  faculty  is  toned  up  and  brought 
into  most  fruitful  exercise. 

The  Christly  character  furnishes  the  only  adequate 
motive  for  the  highest  intellectual  effort  and  aspiration. 
It  furnishes  the  only  key  that  can  unlock  the  secrets 
of  the  universe.  It  furnishes  the  only  reasonable  hope 
of  unlimited  intellectual  progress.  In  a  word,  Christly 
character,  and  that  alone,  fully  satisfies  the  intellectual 
needs  of  man. 

Yet  again,  the  Christly  character  is  wealth,  because 
it  satisfies  the  spiritual  needs  of  the  race.  This,  which 
is  almost  a  truism,  is  of  supreme  importance.  When  we 
are  confronted  with  the  deepest,  the  most  vital  needs  of 
all  human  life,  the  eternal  needs  of  the  soul,  these  find 
no  satisfaction  except  in  Christliness  of  character.  Give 
a  man  material  wealth,  fame,  power,  learning,  culture — 
in  short,  give  him  everything  else  that  the  heart  can  de- 
sire or  the  mind  conceive,  yet  if  the  wants  of  the  soul 
be  unsatisfied  there  can  be  no  true,  no  lasting,  happiness. 
Men  have  been  utterly  miserable  in  the  possession  of 
gold  and  silver  uncounted,  in  the  enjoyment  of  gifts 
and  opportunities  without  limit,  in  the  giddy  whirl  of 
pleasures  and  pastimes,  because  the  spiritual  nature  has 
been  neglected.     On  the  other  hand,  supply  the  wants 

78 


THE         TREASURE 

of  the  soul,  and  though  every  other  satisfaction  be  cut 
off,  there  may  be  joy  unspeakable.  Here  is  a  source 
of  blessedness  that  no  disaster  can  destroy  and  no 
emergency  exhaust. 

The  old  Stoic  philosophers  sought  to  remove  the  ills 
of  life  by  cultivating  the  spirit  of  indifference  in  men, 
by  making  them  content  with  whatever  lot  might  be 
theirs.  It  was  a  sort  of  moral  anesthetic  by  which  the 
finer  senses  of  the  being  were  dulled  and  rendered  less 
sensitive  to  pain  and  suffering.  Not  such  is  the  method 
of  Christ.  He  never  corrects  a  discord  by  destroying 
the  ear,  nor  removes  evil  sights  by  putting  out  the  eye. 
Nor  is  "Resignation"  the  last  word  of  the  gospel.  So 
far  from  this,  true  godliness  renders  every  faculty  of 
body  and  soul  the  more  sensitive,  and  then  seeks  to 
satisfy  the  demands  of  that  sensitiveness.  It  imparts 
to  the  ear  a  new  power  so  that  it  feels  more  than  ever 
the  harshness  of  life's  discords,  yet  through  all  the  din 
and  the  discord  it  can  discern  the  sweet  and  heavenly  har- 
monies. It  makes  the  eye  so  keen  that  even  in  the  most 
distressing  or  revolting  scenes  it  can  discover  some 
tokens  of  the  presence  and  love  of  God.  It  makes  the 
heart  more  tender  in  the  presence  of  sorrow  or  bereave- 
ment, and  then  it  steals  in  with  the  balm  of  infinite 
comfort  and  peace. 

But  all  has  not  yet  been  said.  The  Christly  charac- 
ter is  a  treasure  of  supreme  value,  because  we  can  carry 
it  with  us  to  the  next  world  and  find  it  no  less  current 
there  than  here.  Of  all  things  human  character  alone 
is  eternal.  "Godliness  is  profitable  for  all  things,  hav- 
ing promise  of  the  life  which  now  is,  and  of  that 
which  is  to  come."  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  a  treas- 
ure in  life,  it  is  a  treasure  in  death,  it  is  a  treasure 
throughout  all  eternity.  Its  value  does  not  diminish 
with  the  passage  of  time.  It  rather  goes  on  accumu- 
lating by  a  sort  of  compound  interest  through  this  life, 

79 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

and  the  dividends  continue  through  all  the  endless  ages 
of  eternity. 

Tested  thus  by  the  most  approved  standard  of  modern 
economic  science,  the  Christly  character  is  wealth;  for 
it  supplies  all  human  wants  and  meets  all  human  needs 
for  time  and  for  eternity. 

Now  turn  the  thought  back  again  to  the  parable.  We 
feel  no  surprise  in  view  of  the  action  that  followed  upon 
the  discovery  of  the  treasure.  It  is  most  natural.  "In 
his  joy  he  goeth  and  selleth  all  that  he  hath,  and  buyeth 
that  field." 

Of  course  he  does!  What  else  could  we  expect,  if 
he  is  a  man  of  sound  mind?  Is  he  a  poor  man,  think 
you,  because  he  parted  with  all  his  possessions  in  order 
to  purchase  one  field?  Was  his  conduct  that  of  a  mad- 
man? Very,  very  far  from  it.  He  has  only  exchanged 
poverty  for  wealth,  or  moderate  means  for  great  pos- 
sessions. He  is  a  richer  man  to-day  than  ever  before. 
It  was  for  this  that  he  made  the  exchange.  It  was  no 
loss  to  sell  all  his  property  that  he  might  obtain  the 
treasure.    It  was  gain,  great  gain. 

So  is  it  with  every  one  that  secures  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  at  whatever  cost.  He  has  made  himself  unspeak- 
ably richer  thereby.  Take  the  case  of  Paul,  the  apostle. 
Think  how  much  he  gave  up  when  he  became  a  disciple 
of  Jesus.  Friends,  position,  honor,  wealth,  influence, 
every  prospect  of  advancement,  all  were  laid  upon  the 
altar.  Men  standing  outside  the  kingdom  and  seeing 
only  what  he  gave  up  might  call  him  a  fool ;  but  in  sober 
truth,  even  when  tried  by  a  purely  commercial  stand- 
ard, he  was  a  wise  and  far-seeing  man.  After  a  long 
experience  of  the  value  of  Christliness  he  says,  "What 
things  were  gain  to  me,  those  I  counted  loss  for  Christ. 
Yea  doubtless,  and  I  count  all  things  but  loss  for 
the  excellency  of  the  knowledge  of  Christ  Jesus  my 
Lord."  Such  is  the  testimony  of  one  who  knows  the 

80 


THE  TREASURE 

worth  of  the  treasure  he  has  obtained.  There  is  no  re- 
gretful look  at  the  past;  no  feeling  of  loss  and  self- 
sacrifice;  but  only  a  clear  and  satisfactory  consciousness 
of  great  gain. 

And  like  testimony  comes  to  us  from  countless  wit- 
nesses in  all  the  ages  of  the  Christian  Church.  It  is 
confirmed  by  the  experience  of  every  true  Christian  in 
our  own  day.  Every  sacrifice  made  for  God  and  in  the 
service  of  others,  every  surrender  made  in  the  quest  of 
the  Christly  character,  is  infinitely  rewarded.  No  duty 
is  irksome;  the  sense  of  self-denial  is  impossible;  for  all 
feeling  of  sacrifice  or  loss  is  swallowed  up  in  love  for  the 
Master  and  in  the  joy  which  he  brings  to  us. 

The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  a  treasure.  Oh,  for 
the  power  of  the  divine  Spirit  to  make  us  really  believe 
this  truth!  There  is  nothing  in  all  the  wide  world  of 
such  priceless  value  as  the  Christly  character.  Without 
that,  riches,  honor,  learning,  power,  talent,  are  of  little 
worth;  they  may  even  become  the  instruments  of  evil 
and  sorrow.  Without  it  we  cannot  know  the  truest  hap- 
piness for  the  present  nor  the  largest  hope  for  the  fu- 
ture. Without  it  we  are  in  bondage  to  the  world  and 
the  things  of  the  world.  With  it  we  are  free,  we  are 
rich,  we  are  truly  blessed.  With  it  all  things  are  ours 
for  time  and  for  eternity. 

And  this  possession  is  within  the  reach  of  all.  In 
every  heart  it  lies.  Hidden  it  may  be  by  sin,  by  neg- 
lect, by  worldliness;  covered  deep  perhaps  it  is  by  gen- 
erations of  misdoing  or  false  teaching.  Still  it  is  there. 
Every  human  life  is  a  field  in  which  this  precious  treas- 
ure lies  concealed.  Yet  how  many  seem  utterly  uncon- 
scious of  it !  We  go  about  like  men  and  women  walking 
over  an  undiscovered  gold  mine,  little  heeding  the  wealth 
that  lies  just  beneath  our  feet.  Talent  may  be  denied 
us.  We  may  have  few  opportunities  of  useful  service, 
and  those  we  have  may  seem  insignificant.  It  may  not 
be  ours  to  achieve  great  worldly  success.    But  that  which 

81 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

is  infinitely  more  important,  the  attainment  of  a  Christ- 
like character,  is  within  the  reach  of  even  the  humblest 
and  weakest. 

How  may  it  be  won?  There  is  only  one  way.  Surren- 
der all  to  the  Master.  Give  up  everything  for  his  serv- 
ice, submit  everything  to  his  will.  The  result  is  cer- 
tain. 'There  is  no  man  that  hath  left  house,  or  brethren, 
or  sisters,  or  mother,  or  father,  or  children,  or  lands,  for 
my  sake,  and  for  the  gospel's  sake,  but  he  shall  receive 
a  hundredfold  now  in  this  time,  .  .  .  and  in  the  world  to 
come  eternal  life." 


82 


The  Cost  of 
Character 


<a.  .-«-<.-(• 


r  i 


^  iXJ^' 


iP^  .t^-i .,  i^ 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Cost  of 
Character 

THE   MERCHANTMAN   AND  THE  PEARL 

Matt.  13:45,46 

Text. — '''■The  kingdom  of  hea'ven  is  like  unto  a  man  that  is  a  merchant, " 
^/c-.— Matt.  13:45 

POSSESSIONS  may  be  viewed  from  two  angles. 
We  may  look  upon  them  in  the  light  of  their 
value,  or  we  may  think  of  them  with  relation 
to  their  cost.  These  two  points  of  view  are 
by  no  means  identical.  Indeed,  they  reveal  no 
fixed  or  determinate  relation  one  to  the  other.  An  object 
or  gift  may  be  of  exceeding  value  and  cost  little  or 
nothing;  on  the  other  hand,  that  which  costs  much  may 
have  little  real  value. 

Air  and  water  cost  us  nothing.  "Free  as  air"  or 
"Free  as  water"  have  become  proverbial  expressions; 
for  although  these  are  gifts  of  priceless  value,  we  receive 
them  without  money  and  without  price.  (Our  water- 
rates  in  the  city  are  a  tax  for  pipes  and  machinery  by 
which  the  water  is  brought  into  our  houses,  not  a 
payment  for  the  water  itself.)  By  contrast,  gold,  dia- 
monds, jewels  of  all  sorts  are  very  costly,  yet  their 
intrinsic  value  is  slight. 

Satisfaction  is  the  one  test  of  value.  Air  and  water 
satisfy  certain  imperative  needs  of  man.  We  could  not 
live  without  them.  They  are  absolutely  essential  to  the 
sustaining  of  physical  life.     Possessing  them  in  abtin- 

85 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

dance  and  purity  we  are  immeasurably  richer  than  those 
whose  supply  of  either  is  limited  or  of  a  poor  quality. 
And  he  who  is  cut  off  from  either  may  well  envy  the  beg-* 
gar  by  the  wayside.  Not  so  is  it  with  jewels,  gold,  pre- 
cious stones.  At  best  these  only  satisfy  a  superficial  need, 
the  demands  of  pride  or  the  esthetic  sense.  Their 
costliness  is  artificial  and  wholly  out  of  proportion  to 
their  worth. 

Sometimes,  however,  cost  and  value  are  nearly  equal, 
and  move  up  and  down  the  scale  together.  This  is  true 
of  food,  clothing  material,  and  the  commoner  necessities 
of  life  under  ordinary  circumstances.  Their  cost  is 
regulated  chiefly  by  their  value. 

Now  what  has  this  discussion  of  value  and  cost  to  do 
with  our  Lord's  parables?  Simply  this:  The  distinc- 
tion which  I  have  tried  to  bring  out  is  precisely  that 
which  is  embodied  or  illustrated  in  the  two  parables 
of  The  Treasure  and  The  Merchantman. 

Not  the  titles  that  I  have  given  them,  "The  Treas- 
ure" and  "The  Merchantman."  These  two  companion 
pictures  are  often  confused  or  discussed  together  as 
though  they  were  practically  identical  in  their  mean- 
ing. The  titles  usually  affixed  to  them  betray  and  in- 
crease this  confusion.  They  are  most  frequently  known 
as  the  parables  of  "The  Hidden  Treasure"  and  "The 
Pearl  of  Great  Price."  In  exposition  they  are  made  to 
cover  much  the  same  ground  and  to  teach  the  same 
lessons.  Even  so  clear  and  scholarly  a  writer  as  Dr. 
Dods  says,  "These  two  parables  have  one  and  the  same 
object.  They  are  meant  to  exhibit  the  incomparable 
value  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  Others  of  equal  note 
take  similar  ground.  Nevertheless  I  venture  to  ask, 
Is  this  the  true  interpretation? 

Let  us  interrogate  the  parables  themselves.  In  the 
former  parable  the  Great  Teacher  begins  by  saying, 
"The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  treasure."  Had 
he  intended  to  repeat  the  same  truth  under  a  different  fig- 

86 


THE  MERCHANTMAN  &  THE   PEARL 

ure  we  should  expect  him  to  say,  "The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  Uke  unto  a  pearl."  Such  a  comparison  would 
have  been  at  once  appropriate  and  truthful.  But, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  does  not  say  that.  What 
he  does  say  is,  "The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like 
unto  a  man  that  is  a  merchant."  The  index- 
finger  of  the  one  parable  points  to  a  treasure, 
rich  and  attractive;  that  of  the  second  directs  our  at- 
tention to  a  man,  bids  us  study  his  character  and  follow 
his  action.  Both  parables  present  the  two  figures,  but 
the  light  is  shifted  so  that  in  the  one  the  treasure  glit- 
ters while  the  man  stands  in  the  shadow,  and  in  the  other 
the  sun  shines  on  the  man  while  the  treasure  is  in  the 
darker  background.  It  is  like  a  sentence  in  which  the 
emphasis  is  transferred  from  one  part  to  the  other,  so 
wholly  changing  the  meaning.  The  former  parable 
centered  our  attention  upon  the  thought  of  value ;  the 
lesson  embodied  in  the  latter  is  that  of  cost,  the  cost 
of  the  Christly  character. 

"Bless  God,  salvation's  free!"  we  sing;  and  we  ring 
the  changes  on  that  favorite  quotation  of  many,  "With- 
out money  and  without  price."  We  often  forget  that 
the  invitation  of  the  great  prophet  reads,  not  "Come, 
take,"  but  "Come,  buy  wine  and  milk  without  money 
and  without  price."  Of  course  there  is  a  sense  in  which 
salvation  (i.  e.,  the  perfected  character)  is  absolutely 
free,  the  gift  of  God.  But  there  is  another  sense,  and 
a  very  important  sense,  in  which  the  Christly  character 
is  the  most  costly  thing  on  earth.  It  can  be  obtained 
only  by  the  surrender  of  all  things  else.  Even  life  it- 
self must  not  be  withheld  if  we  are  to  win  the  coveted 
possession. 

This  is  the  truth  which  Jesus  illustrates  and  enforces 
through  the  parable  of  "The  Merchantman  and  the 
Pearl."  This  is  the  golden  thread  which  will  guide  us 
through  its  details  and  enable  us  to  discover  the  mean- 

87 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

ing  of  each.  It  is  the  central  thought  upon  which  the 
picture  is   focused. 

Look  with  me  for  a  few  moments  at  the  picture  of 
the  divine  Artist.  In  the  foreground  stands  an  Oriental 
merchant,  keen,  diligent,  enterprising,  and  thoroughly 
understanding  his  business.  Here  is  our  object-lesson. 
In  his  conduct  and  spirit  we  find  a  type  of  the  wise 
character  seeker.  Do  not  lose  sight  of  him  for  an 
instant.    Watch  him  closely,  study  him  carefully. 

There  he  is  now,  rushing  off  to  the  market  at  the 
earliest  possible  moment,  "seeking  goodly  pearls."  No 
indifference  about  this  merchant  of  ours.  He  is  an 
active,  energetic,  busy  man.  He  means  to  succeed  in 
life,  to  get  rich,  to  take  a  leading  place  among  his  fel- 
low merchants.  Wait  for  something  to  turn  up,  does 
he?  Oh,  no.  He  goes  forth  resolved  to  turn  some- 
thing up.  He  knows  that  success  is  not  a  matter  of 
chance,  but  that  it  follows  clearly  defined  laws.  He 
hopes  to  become  wealthy  not  by  luck,  but  because  he  puts 
into  operation  the  conditions  of  success.  He  is  wise,  sane, 
thrifty.  And  these  qualities  never  fail  to  insure  success 
in  the  world  of  commerce. 

He  is  off  to  the  market,  I  say.  He  does  not  rush 
blindly  about  here  and  there.  He  does  not  go  to  a  black- 
smith or  an  apothecary  in  his  quest.  He  goes  directly 
to  the  fisheries  or  the  pearl  traders.  He  is  in  search  of 
pearls  and  he  does  not  expect  to  find  them  in  a  fruit 
store  or  at  a  ball  game.  He  is  a  man  of  practical  com- 
mon sense,  and  he  adapts  the  means  used  to  the  end  in 
view. 

Follow  him  so  far,  if  you  can.  Has  he  not  given 
you  one  good  lesson,  possibly  two,  already?  The  first 
condition  of  finding  is  seeking.  True,  God's  blessings 
sometimes  come  to  those  who  are  not  seeking  them. 
The  careless,  idle  wanderer  may  stumble  by  mere  chance 
upon  a  rich  treasure ;  but  this  is  not  the  rule.  In  nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  cases  cut  of  a  thousand  the 

88 


THE   MERCHANTMAN  &   THE   PEARL 

successful  men,  in  a  material  sense,  are  those  who  have 
sought  earnestly,  patiently,  for  success,  and  have  ful- 
filled the  conditions  upon  which  it  is  based.  Luck  brings 
an  occasional  fortune  to  some  "Lord"  Timothy  Dexter 
in  return  for  an  investment  of  childish  folly.  Once 
in  a  century  a  Bret  Harte's  "Ji"i  Dow"  may  strike  gold 
when  he  is  digging  for  water.  But  these  are  the  rare 
exceptions.  On  the  other  hand,  pluck  and  hard  work 
always  win  in  the  battle  of  life. 

So  in  spiritual  things ;  doubtless  souls  have  been  touch- 
ed by  the  divine  Spirit  at  most  unexpected  moments  and 
amid  very  unspiritual  surroundings.  A  Conwell  is  con- 
verted at  a  card-table  and  a  John  Newton  on  board  a 
slave-ship.  But  this  is  exceedingly  uncommon.  As  a 
rule,  you  will  not  be  converted  in  a  gambling-hell,  nor 
develop  a  spirit  of  prayer  by  staying  away  from  the 
house  of  God  or  neglecting  the  prayer-meeting.  You 
may  not  hope  to  attain  to  a  Christlike  character  and 
saintly  life  while  your  boon  companions  are  godless  per- 
sons and  your  chosen  occupations  selfish  or  sinful.  There 
is  no  promise  in  the  Scriptures  or  in  reason  of  great 
spiritual  attainments  for  the  indiflFerent  and  careless. 
But  the  Word  of  God  is  full  of  encouragement  to  the 
active  and  intelligent  seeker. 

"Seek  ye  the  Lord  Jehovah  while  he  may  be  found,  call 
ye  upon  him  while  he  is  near:  let  the  wicked  forsake  his 
way,  and  the  unrighteous  man  his  thoughts :  and  let  him 
return  unto  the  Lord,  and  he  will  have  mercy  upon  him; 
and  to  our  God,  for  he  will  abundantly  pardon."  "Ye 
shall  seek  me,  and  find  me,  when  ye  shall  search  for  me 
with  all  your  heart."  "Ask,  and  it  shall  be  given  you ; 
seek,  and  ye  shall  find ;  knock,  and  it  shall  be  opened  unto 
you."  These  are  typical  promises  of  the  Bible  which  find 
abundant  corroboration  in  nature  and  experience.  The 
law  is  universal,  unfailing.  Who  would  attain  to  suc- 
cess must  strive  for  it.  Who  would  find  the  truth  must 
seek  for  it.     Who  would  become   Christlikc  must  put 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

forth  Christly  endeavor,  must  emulate  the  Christly  spirit, 
must  dare  the  Christly  sacrifice,  must  consort  with 
Christly  people. 

Strange,  is  it  not?  that  persons  who  are  wise  as  ser- 
pents in  all  material  things  are  foolish  beyond  all  account 
where  spiritual  matters  are  concerned.  Strange  that 
multitudes  of  men  who  profess  a  desire  for  conversion 
should  never  put  themselves  in  the  way  of  the  Spirit's 
influence!  Strange  that  numberless  disciples  should 
continually  bemoan  their  spiritual  leanness,  and  all  the 
while  they  neglect  the  prayer-meeting,  and  devote  them- 
selves to  worldly  business  or  pleasures,  and  choose  the 
company  of  low  or  unspiritual  people !  As  reasonable  to 
seek  for  pearls  in  a  slaughter-house  as  for  spiritual  ex- 
periences in  the  stock-market — look  for  priceless  jewels 
in  a  shoe  factory  as  soon  as  conversions  at  bridge  whist. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  comparative  values  or  of  right  and 
wrong  in  the  things  mentioned,  but  simply  a  question 
of  common  sense  regarding  the  relations  of  condition  and 
result.  A  single  glance  at  our  pearl  merchant  ought  to 
cover  many  a  would-be  disciple  with  shame  and  confu- 
sion of  face. 

Now  look  again  at  our  merchantman.  He  is  in  the 
market  before  us.  About  him  are  numerous  tradesmen 
with  their  wares.  Some  of  the  gems  they  offer  are  fine, 
large  and  clear ;  others  small  and  imperfect.  For  a  time 
he  looks  eagerly  about,  scanning  the  different  stones 
carefully,  taking  up  one  and  another  to  inspect  it  more 
closely;  but  suddenly  he  stops.  His  attention  is  fixed. 
He  has  been  seeking ;  now  he  has  found.  But  what  has 
he  found?  The  very  thing  he  had  in  mind  as  he  sought? 
No,  not  exactly  that;  but  something  very  much  better. 
He  was  seeking  "goodly  pearls";  he  has  found  a  "pearl 
of  great  price,"  i.  e.,  a  gem  of  surpassing  value.  It  is 
such  a  pearl  as  he  did  not  expect  to  find.  It  far  ex- 
ceeded his  highest  hope.  He  did  not  know  that  there 
was  such  a  pearl  in  existence.    True,  he  has  had  a  large 

90 


THE    MERCHANTMAN  ^  THE   PEARL 

experience  in  tlie  pearl  business,  has  seen  many  a  supe- 
rior gem,  has  informed  himself  regarding  the  famous 
pearls  of  commerce.  But  this  pearl — ah,  he  has  never 
seen  its  like,  nor  has  he  even  read  of  such  a  one !  Like  the 
Kohinoor  among  diamonds,  it  v^^as  of  more  value  than 
many  "goodly"  gems.  Its  possession  will  make  him  a 
rich  man,  rich  beyond  his  fondest  expectation. 

Pause  a  moment  to  note  the  parallel.  Could  illustra- 
tion be  more  perfect,  more  true  to  fact?  Does  it  not 
truly  reflect  the  experience  of  every  earnest  seeker  after 
the  Christly  character?  When  the  inquirer  sets  out  on 
the  pathway  towards  the  heavenly  kingdom  his  ideas  of 
the  highest  good,  of  godliness,  of  Christlikeness,  are 
meager  enough.  Perhaps  he  expects  a  great  deal  by 
comparison  with  what  others  expect.  He  realizes,  it 
may  be,  that  righteousness  and  truth  and  purity  and  love 
are  good  things,  and  he  aims  at  their  cultivation;  but 
when,  as  a  result  of  his  earnestness  and  sincerity  in  seek- 
ing the  best  that  he  knows,  he  finds  God  and  discovers 
the  real  meaning  of  holiness  and  infinite  love,  when  the 
gospel  unfolds  before  him  the  life  and  character  of 
Jesus  Christ,  perfect,  divine,  the  revelation  surpasses 
his  utmost  thought.  He  may  have  been  seeking  goodly 
pearls ;  he  has  found  the  Pearl  of  Greatest  Price,  and  the 
discovery  amazes  him.  In  contrast  with  that  divine 
beauty  how  mean  and  worthless  all  other  ideals  become  1 
The  radiance  streaming  from  Calvary's  cross  makes 
earthly  love  seem  weak  and  selfish,  makes  all  partial 
service  and  sacrifice  contemptible.  And  this  is  the  un- 
varying experience  of  all  vA\o  have  sought  the  kingdom 
of  God.  They  have  sought  the  best  things  they  knew, 
only  to  have  their  vision  infinitely  enlarged  as  they  went, 
and  the  enlarged  desire  fully  satisfied. 

Take  a  single  example.  Jacob,  sobered  by  fear  and 
startled  by  a  wondrous  vision,  begins  to  seek  a  higher 
life.  But  what  are  the  goodly  pearls  that  he  expects  to 
find?    Protection  from  danger;  prosperity  on  his  jour- 

91 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

ney;  success  in  business,  with  wealth  and  peace.  Sordid 
enough  is  the  purpose  of  his  quest;  but  he  is  in  earnest, 
and  he  seeks  from  God.  What  did  he  find?  The  goodly 
pearls  he  sought  ?  Yes,  he  prospered ;  he  was  saved  from 
death  and  danger;  he  was  restored  after  many  years  to 
his  old  home  in  peace.  All  these  blessings  he  found; 
but  they  were  not  all.  He  found  truth,  honesty,  and 
later  genuine  sainthood — spiritual  gems  of  the  existence 
of  which  he  had  no  conception  in  his  youth.  The  expe- 
rience of  Jacob  is  not  unique.  It  is  the  universal  ex- 
perience of  those  who  seek  God.  At  the  outset  motives 
and  ideals  are  always  imperfect,  often  wholly  unworthy. 
But  in  the  progress  of  the  quest  these  are  purified  and 
exalted.  The  selfish  query,  "What  shall  we  have  ?"  gives 
place  to  the  earnest  question,  "What  can  we  do?"  The 
terrified  cry,  "What  must  I  do  to  be  saved?"  is  trans- 
formed into  the  eager  thought,  "What  can  I  do  to  save 
others?"  And  so  the  whole  meaning  and  purpose  of 
discipleship  takes  on  a  new  glory  with  every  advancing 
step. 

Now  comes  the  turning-point  of  the  parable.  Our 
wise  merchant  has  sought  and  found.  What  next?  Does 
he  rush  home  to  tell  his  wife  and  friends  what  a  won- 
derful pearl  he  has  seen?  Does  he  devote  the  remain- 
der of  his  life  to  glowing  descriptions  of  this  wonderful 
gem?  That  is  what  many  spiritual  seekers  do.  They 
get  a  glimpse  of  some  heavenly  glory  and  spend  the  rest 
of  their  days  talking  about  it.  Listen  to  the  testimonies 
in  our  prayer-meetings  or  class-meetings.  How  many 
of  them  deal  with  first-hand  spiritual  experience?  Only 
a  few.  Most  persons  merely  repeat  what  they  have 
heard  from  others,  or  talk  of  that  which  they  have  seen 
or  have  read  about.  The  witness  of  personal  experience 
is  all  too  rare. 

Not  so  with  our  merchant.  He  is  not  content  with 
seeking  and  finding.  These  are  of  no  advantage  in  them- 
selves.   They  must  be  followed  by  possession.    He  is  no 

92 


THE   MERCHANTMAN  &  THE   PEARL 

richer  for  merely  gazing  upon  this  pearl  and  admiring 
it.  Even  the  clearest  and  most  adequate  appreciation 
of  its  value  confers  no  benefit  so  long  as  another  owns 
it.    He  must  make  it  his  own. 

If  we  have  followed  our  guide  thus  far,  we  must  also 
follow  him  here.  Too  many  stop  short  of  this  third 
step.  They  seek  and  find,  but  they  never  possess.  Like 
the  rich  young  man  in  the  Gospels,  they  are  filled  with 
admiration  for  the  Christly  character,  they  even  worship 
its  divine  beauty;  but  that  is  all.  Reverently,  wistfully 
even,  they  study  the  character  revealed  in  Jesus;  but 
they  never  think  of  making  that  character  their  own. 

"God's  everlasting  love!     What  would  we  more? 
Yes,  one  thing  more.    To  know  it  ours  indeed. 
To  add  the  conscious  joy  of  full  possession." 

This  is  all-important. 

Failing  to  catch  this  point,  we  read  our  parable  in 
vain.  The  merchant  seeks,  finds,  determines  to  possess. 
But  how?  ''He  went  and  sold  all  that  he  had."  This  is 
the  climax  of  the  parable.  Everything  that  he  owned 
must  be  turned  into  ready  money  that  he  may  secure  the 
coveted  jewel.  First,  his  stock  of  pearls,  a  rare  collec- 
tion, containing  many  a  gem  of  unusual  beauty  and  value 
that  in  times  past  has  afforded  him  not  a  little  satisfac- 
tion, is  now  offered  for  sale  without  reserve.  After  his 
pearls,  his  store,  his  home,  his  furniture,  even  his  cher- 
ished heirlooms — every  article  that  will  bring  money  in 
return  is  freely  oflFered.  He  knows  that  if  he  can  obtain 
this  priceless  jewel  he  will  be  far  richer  than  with  all 
these  things,  and  that  he  can  repurchase  all  that  are 
really  of  value. 

A  wise  man  he;  and  we  may  well  take  him  for  our 
teacher.  This  is  what  he  says  to  us :  "Part  with  all  thou 
hast ;  part  with  it  quickly ;  part  with  it  gladly ;  nor  waste 
a  moment  in  foolish  regret.  The  price  of  Christly  char- 
acter  is   complete   self-surrender   to   God.     The   king- 

93 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

dom  of  heaven  can  be  obtained  only  at  the  cost  of 
all  things  else.  Who  withholds  the  smallest  trifle  can 
never  know  the  meaning  of  full  salvation,  of  complete 
sainthood." 

"What !  must  I  give  up  everything  that  I  possess — my 
wealth,  my  business,  my  life?"  Yes,  to  God.  You  must 
hold  every  dollar  you  own  absolutely  at  his  disposal,  to 
be  used  precisely  as  he  would  have  you  use  it.  Your 
business  you  must  surrender  to  him,  to  be  given  up  if 
he  wills,  or,  if  he  wills,  to  be  carried  on  in  a  perfectly 
Christian  fashion;  and  that  means  just  as  Jesus  Christ 
would  carry  it  on  were  he  in  your  place,  to  be  carried 
on  for  the  same  purpose  for  which  Jesus  carried  on 
his  work  of  preaching  and  healing  and  helping.  You 
must  submit  every  item  of  your  life,  your  recreations, 
your  pleasures,  your  ambitions,  your  desires,  to  the 
control  of  his  will,  to  the  clear  light  of  his  truth. 

"Cannot  I  attain  the  Christly  character  without  this 
complete  surrender  ?  Have  not  many  men  become  saints 
who  did  not  give  up  everything  to  God?  Are  there 
not  many  in  the  Christian  Church  who  have  never  made 
such  surrender?"  Ah,  yes,  many  disciples  have  not  made 
the  full  surrender ;  but  these  have  not  found  the  Christly 
character.  "Goodly  pearls"  you  may  obtain  more  cheaply. 
Church-membership  costs  little  either  in  money  or  service. 
Respectability  may  be  had  for  a  song.  A  reputation  for 
benevolence  or  spirituality  or  religious  zeal  and  efficiency 
calls  for  only  a  part  of  the  price.  Even  the  title  of 
"Saint"  is  scarcely  more  expensive  than  a  doctor's  degree 
from  a  bogus  university.  But  the  one  "Pearl  of  great 
price,"  the  genuine  Christly  character,  that  can  be  secured 
only  by  the  willing  sacrifice  of  everything  else.  Listen 
to  the  declaration  of  the  Master  himself:  "If  any  man 
cometh  unto  me,  and  hateth  not  his  own  father,  and 
mother,  and  wife,  and  children,  and  brethren,  and  sis- 
ters, yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be  my  disci- 
ple.   Whosoever  doth  not  bear  his  own  cross,  and  come 

94 


THE    MERCHANTMAN  &  THE   PEARL 

after  me,  cannot  be  my  disciple.  .  .  .  Whosoever  he  be  of 
you  that  renounceth  not  all  that  he  hath,  he  cannot  be 
my  disciple."  Study  this  parable  in  the  light  of  those 
words. 

Do  not  stay  at  this  point,  however.  Our  drama  has  yet 
one  more  act.  After  the  selling,  buying.  "He  went  and 
sold  all  that  he  had,  and  bought  it."  All  will 
agree  with  me  that  we  can  follow  our  merchant  to  this 
point,  if  we  will.  But  here  many  will  halt.  They  will 
say,  "We  cannot  buy  the  Christly  character.  Salvation 
is  not  a  matter  of  purchase.  These  things  are  the  free 
gift  of  God."  I  reply.  You  can  never  obtain  them  in  any 
other  way  than  by  purchase.  "But  did  not  Peter  pro- 
nounce a  scathing  rebuke  upon  Simon  Magus,  because 
he  sought  to  purchase  the  gift  of  God?"  True;  but 
why?  Not  because  he  tried  to  buy  God's  blessing, 
but  because  he  offered  too  little  for  it.  He  wanted  to 
purchase  the  divine  power  for  a  paltry  sum  of  gold.  Had 
he  made  his  offer  large  enough  it  would  have  been  gladly 
accepted.  Had  he  made  it  large  enough,  had  he  offered 
himself  with  his  money,  had  he  surrendered  his  life  and 
his  all  to  the  service  of  the  Christ  to  be  his  alone  and 
his  forever,  the  bargain  would  have  been  concluded  on 
the  spot. 

Not  by  the  terms  of  this  parable  alone,  but  by  the 
frequent  use  of  mercantile  terms  in  the  Scriptures,  and 
by  the  very  titles  of  our  sacred  books  which  signify  the 
Old  and  New  Covenants,  we  are  warranted  in  saying 
that  there  is  a  very  important  sense  in  which  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  can  be — must  be — ^purchased.  To  speak 
of  a  gift  conveys  a  certain  idea  of  capriciousness.  It  is 
something  wholly  independent  of  the  will  of  the  re- 
ceiver. I  must  wait  for  a  gift  until  the  donor  pleases 
to  bestow  it.  But  a  purchase  conforms  to  the  laws  of 
trade.  I  may  buy  what  I  will,  when  I  will,  the  moment 
I  am  ready  and  willing  to  pay  the  price. 

In  this  sense  we  may  purchase  the  gifts  of  God.    To 

95 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

every  divine  promise  is  affixed  a  definite  and  clear  con- 
dition. We  obtain  the  blessing  only  when  the  condition 
is  fufilled.  Even  the  supreme  blessing,  the  salvation  of 
the  immortal  soul,  the  attainment  of  the  perfect  charac- 
ter, is  offered  on  conditions  as  definite  and  as  tangible 
as  those  upon  which  one  may  obtain  a  pearl  from  the 
jeweler.  When  one  is  ready  to  pay  the  price,  he  need 
not  wait  a  moment  for  the  blessing. 

Have  I  not  read  aright  the  lesson  of  our  Lord's  par- 
able? The  cost  of  character,  what  is  it?  In  figure, 
this:  seeking,  finding,  selling,  buying.  In  literal  fact: 
earnest  purpose,  diligent  search,  complete  self-surrender, 
glad  and  full  possession.  Withhold  the  price,  keep  back 
never  so  small  a  portion  of  it,  and  the  pearl  cannot  be 
yours.  Though  you  pray  fervently  and  without  ceas- 
ing, though  you  scatter  your  money  broadcast  in  ap- 
proved benevolence,  though  you  are  conspicuous  and  tire- 
less in  religious  activity,  though  you  delight  in  self- 
denial  and  sacrifice,  all  will  be  in  vain.  Tears  and  labors, 
fasts  and  vigils,  are  useless.  But  pay  the  price  of  will- 
ing self-surrender,  freely,  fully,  and  the  Christly  char- 
acter shall  be  yours.  Ignorant  and  lacking  in  gifts  you 
may  be,  few  and  insignificant  may  be  your  opportuni- 
ties for  service;  but  in  you  the  spirit  and  the  life  of 
the  Christ  will  surely  appear;  and  these  will  abundantly 
recompense  you  for  all  the  cost.  And  thus  shall  be  richly 
supplied  unto  you  the  entrance  into  the  eternal  kingdom 
of  our  Lord  and  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ. 


96 


The  Completion 
of  Character 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Completion 
of  Character 

THE  DRAG-NET 

Matt.  13:47-50 

Text. — *^The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  net/'' — Matt.  13:47 

HOPE  is  the  mainspring  of  intelligent  effort. 
Hope  is  the  fountain  of  courage,  the  seed 
germ  of  endless  progress.  In  the  presence 
of  hope  difficulties  shrink  and  impossibili- 
ties vanish  away.  Open  the  door  of  hope 
before  the  weakest  man,  and  a  new  sense  of  power 
thrills  within  him.  He  will  no  longer  lie  prone  upon 
earth,  but  may  soar  aloft  to  the  very  heavens.  Close 
the  door  upon  the  strongest  and  noblest  and  he  will  sink 
to  the  level  of  the  brutes. 

What  has  made  the  difference  between  the  free,  pro- 
gressive American  and  the  degenerate  subject  of  Turk- 
ish misrule?  Why  is  one  intelligent,  thrifty,  advanced 
and  ever  advancing,  while  the  other  lives  in  the  same 
barbarous,  primitive  fashion  in  which  his  ancestors  lived 
centuries  ago?  The  answer  is  contained  in  the  single 
word  "Hope."  Every  child  in  our  land,  however  poor, 
is  born  to  an  inheritance  of  hope.  Whatever  the  cir- 
cumstances of  his  birth,  he  knows  that  he  may  reasonably 
aspire  to  the  highest  achievements  of  wealth,  social 
position  or  honor,  and  he  also  knows  that  if  he  attains 
to  these  no  man  will  take  them  from  him.  He  toils  dil- 
igently   and    uncomplainingly,    therefore,    because    he 

99 


THE      TEACHINGS     OF      JESUS 

knows  that  the  fruits  of  his  toil  will  be  his  own.  Day  by 
day  he  rests  in  the  assured  and  peaceful  possession  of 
what  he  has  gained,  while  he  looks  forward  to  larger 
achievements  in  days  to  come. 

By  contrast,  he  who  enters  the  world  under  an  Ori- 
ental despotism  can  hope  for  little.  He  is  hedged  about 
by  difficulties  and  discouragements;  he  is  hampered  by 
unjust  customs  and  laws  or  want  of  laws.  Toil  hard  as 
he  may,  he  has  no  assurance  of  success  or  advancement ; 
and  if  successful  the  fruits  of  his  labors  may  be  seized 
by  an  envious  ruler.  Any  gain  in  knowledge  or  cul- 
ture or  wealth  only  makes  him  the  target  of  suspicion 
and  jealousy  by  those  in  power.  Hence  the  one  great 
incentive  to  progress  is  wanting. 

What  is  the  difference  between  Christian  England  and 
heathen  Africa?  Whence  comes  the  moral  superiority 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  over  the  followers  of  Moham- 
med or  Buddha?  Again  "Hope"  is  the  key-word. 
Christianity  is  the  religion  of  hope.  The  secret  of  the 
moral  progress  of  Christendom  is  contained  in  that  one 
verse  from  the  epistle  of  John,  "Beloved,  now  are  we 
children  of  God,  and  it  is  not  yet  made  manifest  what 
we  shall  be.  We  know  that,  if  he  shall  be  manifested, 
we  shall  be  like  him;  for  we  shall  see  him  even  as 
he  is.  And  every  one  that  hath  this  hope  set  on  him 
puriHeth  himself,  even  as  he  is  pure." 

True,  this  declaration  has  been  qualified  and  explained 
and  doubted,  until  it  has  lost  much  of  its  force  in  the 
life  of  the  Christian  Church.  Nevertheless  it  abides  as 
a  part  of  the  eternal  word  of  God,  and  always  there  are 
some  who  accept  its  truth  and  enter  into  the  fulness 
of  its  blessing.  Christliness  is  possible  only  to  him  who 
hopes  to  become  Christlike.  He  alone  proves  himself 
a  son  of  God  who  believes  in  his  own  real  divinity. 
Heaven  is  the  goal  of  the  hopeful ;  the  hopeless  and  de- 
spairing will  never  climb.  The  great  Italian  poet  could 
find  no  motto  more  appropriate  for  the  gate  of  hell  than 

100 


THE        DRAG-NET 

this:  "All  hope  abandon,  ye  who  enter-here."  He  might 
have  written,  "Who  abandons  hope  must  enter  here," 
for  hopelessness  will  sink  any  soul  to  perdition.  The  ma- 
terial stagnation  that  follows  from  hopelessness  is  a  trifle 
by  comparison  with  the  moral  degradation  springing 
from  the  same  source.  The  hopeless  man  will  not  strive 
for  spiritual  advancement  and  enrichment  any  more  than 
for  material  gain.  His  outward  poverty  and  barbarism 
will  be  fitting  types  of  the  mental  and  moral  paralysis 
that  creeps  slowly  but  surely  over  his  inner  life. 

Is  it  strange,  then,  that  Jesus,  in  his  great  dijscourse 
upon  character  building,  should  have  touched  at  the  close 
the  spring  of  hope?  Rather  is  it  not  most  natural,  just 
vv'hat  we  should  expect  ?  Of  what  use  to  paint  in  glow- 
ing colors  the  value  and  beauty  of  the  heavenly  charac- 
ter, unless  there  be  added  some  assurance  that  such  char- 
acter is  actually  attainable;  that  at  some  time,  either  in 
this  world  or  the  next,  it  will  surely  be  made  perfect? 

We  listen  to  the  parables  of  The  Growing  Seed,  The 
Wheat  and  Tares,  The  Mustard  Seed,  and  the  rest,  and  in 
our  hearts  springs  up  the  desire  for  Christliness.  We 
recognize  the  exceeding  beauty  of  the  picture.  We  con- 
fess the  glory  and  worth  of  the  ideal.  Were  it  possible 
we  would  possess  this  priceless  Treasure,  this  Pearl  of 
great  price.  In  ourselves  and  in  the  world  we  would  re- 
joice to  see  the  kingdom  of  heaven  triumphant.  But 
thus  far  the  note  of  triumph  has  not  been  sounded.  The 
picture  has  been  that  of  struggle  and  imperfection.  Our 
only  experience  in  spiritual  things  is  an  experience  of 
warfare.  We  are  distracted  with  conflicting  motives  and 
influences.  And  we  naturally  ask,  "Is  this  state  of 
things  eternal?  Is  individual  character  to  be  won  and 
maintained  only  by  a  perpetual  struggle  between  good 
and  evil?  Is  Christliness  to  exist  in  the  world  only  at 
the  cost  of  a  ceaseless  warfare  with  the  hosts  of  dark- 
ness? Is  the  right  to  hold  the  balance  of  power  forever 
by  a  slight  and  uncertain  margin?    And  must  all  right- 

101 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF    JESUS 

eousness  whether  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race  be 
eternally  imperfect?" 

To  answer  such  questions  as  these,  Jesus  spoke  the 
parable  of  The  Net  Cast  into  the  Sea.  It  is  a  necessary 
conclusion  to  the  wonderful  series  of  pictures  which  he 
had  presented  to  that  seaside  audience.  Without  it  the 
panorama  would  have  little  value  or  attractiveness.  It 
would  be  shorn  of  its  power  for  highest  good.  The 
Master  has  spoken  of  the  Vitality  of  Character ;  the  Con- 
servation of  Character;  the  Growth,  Influence,  Value, 
and  Cost  of  Character.  It  now  remains  to  sketch  the 
Completion  of  the  Christly  Character.  For  such  promise 
the  heart  yearns.  In  such  assurance  lies  the  germ  of 
hope  and  imparts  a  new  glow  of  beauty  to  all  that  goes 
before ;  and  we  feel  that  the  entire  discourse  has  a  mean- 
ing hitherto  unsuspected.  Here,  at  last,  we  have  found 
the  needed  counterpoise  to  the  picture  of  The  Wheat  and 
the  Tares;  here  the  clearer  light  that  shall  make  that 
riddle  plain. 

"The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  net^  that  was 
cast  into  the  sea^  and  gathered  of  every  kind:  which, 
when  it  was  filled,  they  drew  up  on  the  beach ;  and  they 
sat  down,  and  gathered  the  good  into  vessels,  but  the 
bad  they  cast  away."  Clearly  this  is  intended  as  a  com- 
panion-piece to  the  parable  of  The  Wheat  and  the  Tares. 
Although  the  scenes  are  totally  dissimilar,  the  underlying 
truths  are  closely  related,  as  is  manifest  from  our  Lord's 
interpretation  of  the  pictures.  The  difference  is  chiefly 
a  matter  of  emphasis.  Both  parables  treat  of  the  de- 
velopment and  completion  of  character,  but  the  focus  of 
the  former  parable  is  on  the  process  of  development, 
while  that  of  the  latter  is  on  the  attainment  of  completion, 
present  toleration  is  the  lesson  of  The  Wheat  and  the 
Tares ;  final  separation  is  the  promise  of  The  Drag-net.^' 

"Let  both  grow  together"  is  the  command  regarding 
our  treatment  of  evil  in  present  conditions.    Our  business 

102 


THE  DRAG-NET 

is  not  to  root  up  evil,  but  to  give  ourselves  to  the  positive 
culture  of  the  good,  to  the  attainment  and  cultivation  of 
righteousness.  Yet,  after  all,  this  is  temporary.  We 
need  not  fear  that,  because  we  let  it  grow,  the  evil  will 
remain  forever  to  hamper  us ;  for  we  have  here  the  prom- 
ise, "In  the  end  of  the  world,  the  angels  shall  come  forth, 
and  sever  the  wicked  from  among  the  righteous,  and 
shall  cast  them  into  the  furnace  of  fire." 

Do  not  be  alarmed  if  I  seem  to  depart  from  the  tra- 
ditional interpretation  of  this  parable;  for  careful  con- 
sideration may  show  the  divergence  to  be  more  in  seem- 
ing than  in  reality.  In  any  case  the  traditional  interpre- 
tation is  by  no  means  harmonious  with  itself  or  satis- 
factory to  those  who  adopt  it.  It  is  common  to  define 
the  net  either  as  the  Church  gathering  men  out  of  the 
world,  or  as  the  course  of  divine  Providence  by  which 
all  men  are  at  last  gathered  upon  the  shores  of  another 
world.  By  this  method  of  interpretation  the  identity  of 
the  fisherman  is  very  hard  to  determine.  But  the  separa- 
tion is  supposed  to  represent  the  final  judgment  and  the 
divine  approval  or  condemnation  of  different  classes  of 
persons. 

If,  however,  we  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  not  the  Church  or  any  other  collec- 
tion or  organization  of  men,  but  the  Christly  character, 
we  shall  see  in  the  parable,  not  a  complex  and  somewhat 
mixed  drama  of  probation  and  judgment,  but  a  simple 
picture  of  the  development  and  maturity  of  character. 
And  we  shall  see  that  the  idea  of  maturity  or  comple- 
tion occupies  the  prominent  foreground,  while  the 
thought  of  development  is  made  wholly  secondary. 

What  are  the  net,  the  fisherman,  the  sea,  the  beach? 
It  matters  little  how  we  define  these  details,  or  whether 
we  define  them  at  all.  The  significance  of  the  picture 
lies  not  in  one  or  another  of  them.  It  is  rather  the 
process  as  a  whole,  the  casting,  the  gathering,  the  sep- 
arating, as  a  continuous  action,  that  is  designed  to  repre- 

103 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

sent  something  with  regard  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
And  that  something  is  a  process  attaining  completion. 
In  a  sentence,  it  is  a  picture  of  the  completion  of  the 
Christly  Character. 

Now,  what  specifically  does  the  parable  teach? 
This  first,  does  it  not? — that  character  in  its 
beginnings,  even  the  Christly  character,  is  very 
complex.  True  character  must  begin  with  a  mix- 
ture of  good  and  evil;  it  must  infold  a  diversity  of  ten- 
dencies and  motives.  It  "is  like  unto  a  net  that  was  cast 
into  the  sea,  and  gathered  of  every  kind."  Mere  inno- 
cence, i.  e.,  freedom  from  evil,  is  not  character.  Our  first 
parents  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  were  not  holy.  The  babe 
in  the  cradle  is  not.  Theirs  is  the  mere  unmoral  inno- 
cence of  the  lambs  that  skip  upon  the  hillsides  or  the  kit- 
tens that  play  upon  the  floor.  Righteousness  is  the  result 
of  battle  and  conquest.  There  is  no  righteousness  that  is 
not  so  attained.  Even  the  Christ  had  his  conflict  with 
temptations,  his  wilderness  battles  with  Satan,  his  trials 
with  too  friendly  disciples  and  an  enthusiastic  populace. 
Were  it  otherwise  he  could  never  have  been  the  world's 
Saviour.  Does  not  personal  experience  testify  to  the 
existence  of  this  complex  gathering  in  every  heart?  In 
the  process  of  our  moral  development  evil  is  always 
present  with  the  good,  sometimes  conquering,  sometimes 
conquered.  Even  in  the  most  saintly  life  we  may  dis- 
cover a  variety  of  qualities  as  diverse  as  the  fish  in  the 
net. 

Oftentimes  we  think  that  we  should  be  better  off  if 
there  were  no  evil ;  but  God  has  thought  otherwise.  What- 
ever we  may  conceive  to  be  the  origin  of  evil,  of  this 
we  are  certain,  that  God  has  seen  fit  to  place  us  in  the 
midst  of  it,  and  to  leave  us  free  to  choose  between  the 
evil  and  the  good.  It  may  be  that,  as  Emerson  has  said, 
evil  is  only  "good  in  the  making."  At  all  events  we 
know  that  all  moral  strength,  all  true  manhood  and 
womanhood,  grows  out  of  the  conflict  with  and  triumph 

104 


THE  DRAG-NET 

over  sin.  The  temptation  which  caused  the  fall  of  man 
was  the  only  possible  means  of  his  rise  from  animalism 
to  sainthood.  But  for  the  possibility  of  sin  involved  in 
the  presence  of  evil  there  were  no  possibility  of 
righteousness  through  the  struggle  with  and  victory  over 
sin. 

What  is  true  in  the  development  of  individual  char- 
acter is  also  and  equally  true  in  the  building  up  of  char- 
acter in  the  race.  In  fact,  the  moral  growth  of  the  race 
is  identical  in  method  with  that  of  the  individual;  but 
the  outlines  are  cast  upon  a  larger  surface.  In  the  be- 
ginning we  discover  the  greatest  imaginable  complexity 
of  ideals.  Even  among  those  who  are  most  earnest  to 
know  the  truth  and  to  fulfil  the  law  of  righteousness 
there  is  endless  diversity  in  the  notions  that  prevail  con- 
cerning God,  religion,  government,  marriage,  and  many 
other  institutions  that  lie  at  the  very  foundations  of  hu- 
man life.  Over  against  every  truth  have  appeared  a 
thousand  falsehoods  or  errors,  and  human  progress  has 
been  achieved  only  by  the  comparison  of  the  true  and 
the  false  followed  by  the  choice  of  the  true. 

In  the  second  place,  the  parable  brings  out  the  fact 
that  the  development  of  character  is  towards  simplicity 
or  true  unity.  The  child  character  is  a  compound  of 
good  and  evil  possibilities  about  evenly  balanced.  It  is 
made  up  of  diverse  tendencies,  none  of  which  pre- 
ponderates. It  contains  all  potentialities  for  good  and 
evil.  But  the  character  of  mature  manhood  and  woman- 
hood is  distinctly  one  or  the  other,  good  or  bad.  Who- 
ever fails  to  manifest  this  positive  ascendency  of  the 
one  over  the  other  remains  in  a  state  of  moral  infancy. 
We  may  not  witness  the  actual  completion  of  the  proc- 
ess in  a  single  instance  in  this  world.  That  is  not 
necessary.  But,  so  far  as  we  are  permitted  to  trace  it, 
the  tendency  is  plain,  and  its  outcome  easily  foreseen. 
The  angels,  i.  e.,  the  divine  agencies  which  surround  and 
influence  all  human  life,  are  perpetually  separating  the 

105 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

good  from  the  ill.  In  the  exercise  of  daily  experience 
and  the  atmosphere  of  a  careful  Providence,  one  ele- 
ment of  character  increases  while  the  other  diminishes. 
It  may  be  the  good  that  grows ;  it  may  be  the  evil.  That 
depends  upon  the  individual.  The  messengers  of  God 
present  continuous  opportunities  for  highest  service  and 
attainment,  each  of  which  infolds  a  corresponding  pos- 
sibility of  evil ;  the  choice  between  these  is  a  weight  cast 
upon  one  side  or  the  other  of  the  scale.  The  original 
balance  is  never  maintained.  The  mature  character  is 
never  as  perfectly  complex  as  that  of  childhood. 

The  child  nature  may  be  fittingly  compared  to  a 
chemical  compound.  Many  and  varied  are  the  elements 
of  which  it  is  composed.  The  agencies  by  which  char- 
acter is  molded  are  like  the  precipitant  which  the  chem- 
ist introduces,  and  by  means  of  which  the  compound  is 
quickly  separated  into  its  constituent  simples.  Moral 
growth  is  a  process  of  precipitation.  It  is  the  separation 
of  moral  elements. 

Finally  the  parable  contains  a  promise  of  the  ultimate 
perfection  of  character.  Whether  we  are  permitted  to 
see  it  in  this  world  or  not,  the  process  which  has  already 
begun  will  go  on  to  completion.  The  separation  be- 
tween good  and  evil  will  at  some  time  be  accomplished 
and  the  evil  will  be  removed  and  destroyed. 

The  phrase,  "in  the  end  of  the  world/'  is  not  abso- 
lutely definite  in  its  significance.  It  does  not  neces- 
sarily look  forward  to  the  time  when  this  earth  shall 
cease  to  exist  as  a  habitable  globe,  or  to  the  close  of  the 
racial  history,  but  may  refer  to  the  consummation  or 
end  of  the  process  of  character  building.  Our  attention 
is  clearly  not  called  in  any  definite  manner  to  new  con- 
ditions in  another  world,  but  rather  to  the  certain  re- 
sult of  conditions  and  activities  which  we  may  perceive 
in  this  world. 

The  angels  of  God,  in  the  form  of  spiritual  forces  and 
laws,  are  even  now  separating  the  good  from  the  evil. 

106 


THE  DRAG-NET 

On  all  sides  we  may  behold  them  carefully  preserving  the 
good,  while  they  visit  the  evil  with  torment  and  sorrow, 
or  cast  it  wholly  away.  With  what  disciplines  of  repent- 
ance and  remorse,  it  may  be  of  suffering  and  of  pain,  is 
the  sin  burned  out  of  the  life  of  an  Augustine  or  a 
Bunyan  or  a  John  Newton  ?  But  after  the  work  is  com- 
pleted, their  righteousness  has  "shone  forth  as  the  sun  in 
the  kingdom  of  their  Father."  The  goal  of  Christliness 
has  been  reached  by  men,  and  this  has  been  the  way  to  it. 

But  we  have  not  yet  heard  the  last  word  which  our 
parable  has  for  us.  It  is  a  picture  of  the  growth  and 
completion  of  God's  kingdom  in  the  individual  soul.  It  is 
also  a  picture  of  the  establishment  of  that  kingdom  in 
the  world.  For  the  moral  and  spiritual  growth  of  each 
one  of  us  is  an  accurate  type  of  a  similar  growth  in  the 
race.  In  the  world  the  development  of  character  is 
from  the  complex  to  the  simple.  The  spiritual  evolu- 
tion of  mankind  has  ever  been  and  is  to-day  a  process 
of  separation.  It  is  accomplished  through  the  attain- 
ment of  ever  clearer  distinctions  between  right  and 
wrong. 

How  complex  and  murky  were  the  moral  ideals  of 
the  early  ages!  Abraham,  the  saint  of  his  times,  was 
a  polygamist  and  a  freebooter.  Moses,  the  inspired 
lawgiver,  was  an  outlawed  murderer.  David,  the  match- 
less singer  of  the  ages,  was  a  cruel  and  superstitious 
ruler  at  best,  not  to  speak  of  the  specific  crimes  that  lie 
at  his  door.  Even  when  we  come  to  the  early  Church, 
we  find  in  the  lives  of  those  whom  we  call  ''saints" 
many  false  notions  and  low  ideals.  The  prevailing  meth- 
ods and  principles  of  the  Christian  leaders  in  the  third 
and  fourth  centuries  would  shame  those  of  the  lowest 
and  most  godless  politicians  of  our  own  time.  The  his- 
tory of  Christendom  has  been  a  course  of  gradual  sepa- 
ration between  good  and  evil,  followed  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  evil. 

By  what  fierce  struggles  has  tyranny  been  overthrown 

107 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

and  freedom  secured!  With  what  fires  of  sorrow  and 
sacrifice  was  the  sin  of  slavery  burned  out  of  our  own 
national  life,  after  the  light  of  gospel  truth  had  been 
shining  for  more  than  eighteen  centuries !  At  what  cost 
of  social  unrest  and  danger  are  we  to-day  sloughing  off 
the  sins  of  greed  and  selfishness  from  our  commerce 
and  our  society!  Every  day  our  moral  vision  grows 
clearer.  Every  day  we  discover  the  wrong  in  customs 
and  institutions  and  habits  that  were  formerly  consid- 
ered right.  The  liquor  traffic,  for  example,  which  is 
now  relegated  to  the  low  and  criminal  classes,  less 
than  a  century  ago  was  deemed  fit  for  Christian  men. 
The  lottery,  which  has  been  countenanced  by  government 
patronage  within  the  brief  limits  of  our  own  national 
history,  is  to-day  banished  from  the  country.  Dr.  John 
Watson  says,  "To-day  a  millionaire  is  respected;  there 
are  signs  that  in  future  years  a  man  leaving  a  huge  for- 
tune will  be  thought  a  semi-criminal." 

Thus  the  Spirit  of  God  is  slowly  but  surely  separating 
the  evil  from  the  good  among  men,  and  is  destroying 
the  evil.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  coming  on  earth, 
however  we  may  be  tempted  to  doubt  it  at  times.  He 
studies  history  to  little  advantage  who  cannot  find  num- 
berless tokens  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  advance  of 
mankind  under  the  influence  of  the  gospel.  We  fre- 
quently hear  Christians  bemoaning  the  degeneracy  of 
the  Church  in  the  present  generation,  and  the  deca- 
dence of  the  spiritual  life  of  to-day  by  contrast  with  that 
of  our  fathers  and  grandfathers.  A  complete  and  per- 
manent cure  for  such  pessimism  would  result  from  the 
study  of  Church  life  and  history  in  New  England  from 
the  days  of  the  Puritans  to  the  present.  The  steady 
and  marvelous  development  of  both  ideals  and  practise, 
the  growth  of  toleration  and  true  beneficence,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  great  advance  in  moral  and  spiritual  life, 
give  the  lie  to  that  most  meaningless  of  phrases,  "the 
good  old  times." 

108 


THE  DRAG-NET 

Many  sins  have  been  removed  and  destroyed  already. 
We  may  still  hear  the  weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth 
of  some  that  are  even  now  in  the  fire.  Others  are  but 
dimly  distinguishable  from  the  good,  and  their  destruc- 
tion is  yet  to  come.  Not  far  distant  is  the  time  when 
the  sin  of  war  will  no  longer  be  a  blot  upon  the  pages  of 
Christian  history.  It  may  be  that  you  and  I  will  yet 
be  called  upon  to  give  up  manv  a  practise  which  we, 
and  all  other  men,  now  consider  perfectly  righteous  and 
innocent.  If  we  are  not  prepared  to  do  this  when  the 
clearer  revelation  shall  dawn,  we  have  no  right  to  pray, 
"Thy  kingdom  come." 

If,  now,  I  have  rightly  interpreted  this  parable  of  The 
Drag-net,  it  is  not  so  much  a  note  of  warning  as  of  en- 
couragement. It  is  designed  to  kindle  hope  rather  than 
to  excite  fear.  Not  judgment  and  penalty,  but  freedom 
and  joy  through  ultimate  triumph  is  its  central  thought. 
As  such  is  it  not  a  revelation  that  comes  very  close  to 
every  one  of  our  lives,  and  that  meets  a  universal  need 
in  every  aspiring  soul? 

We  stand  face  to  face  with  a  host  of  evils.  As  we 
strive  for  saintly  character  we  are  sometimes  tempted 
to  give  over  the  struggle  in  despair.  Christliness  seems 
utterly  unattainable.  "The  good  which  we  would  we  do 
not :  but  the  evil  which  we  would  not,  that  we  practise," 
is  the  true  expression  of  our  common  experience.  And 
when,  turning  from  ourselves  to  others,  we  seek  to  bring 
the  Christly  character  into  the  world  about  us,  when  we 
aim  at  some  manifest  good  for  our  fellow  men  and  find 
our  efforts  unappreciated,  yes,  thwarted,  by  those  whom 
we  would  help  and  save,  we  are  tempted  to  believe  that 
the  world  is  growing  worse  instead  of  better,  and  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  moral  completeness  or  per- 
fection. 

The  saintly  Faber  has  voiced  the  feelings  of  number- 
less disciples  in  the  familiar  lines, 

109 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

"Oh,  it  is  hard  to  work  for  God, 
To  rise  and  take  his  part 
Upon  this  battle-field  of  earth, 
And  not  sometimes  lose  heart! 


Ill  masters  good;  good  seems  to  change 
To  ill  with  greatest  ease; 
And,  worst  of  all,  the  good  with  good 
Is  at  cross-purposes." 

Many  others  can  echo  the  lines  of  Tennyson, — 
"Oh,  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill, 
To  pangs  of  nature,  sins  of  will, 
Defects  of  doubt,  and  taints  of  blood; 


I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope. 
And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all. 
And   faintly  trust  the  larger  hope." 

Yes,  our  perplexity  is  often  deep,  our  trust  faint  in- 
deed. How  can  the  Christly  character  be  maintained  in 
the  midst  of  so  much  sin?  How  can  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  be  won  when  the  powers  of  evil  are  so  strong 
and  so  wise  and  so  persistent?  So  we  question.  And 
there  comes  to  us  across  the  centuries  this  parable  with 
its  message  of  hope  and  promise.  Like  a  guiding  star 
it  beckons  us  onward  with  its  ceaseless  assurance,  "The 
good  you  seek  shall  triumph;  the  evil  you  hate  shall 
some  time  be  destroyed.  You  shall  not  labor  nor  strive 
in  vain.  The  Christly  character,  the  perfect  righteous- 
ness shall  be  yours ;  it  shall  at  last  be  the  character  of 
the  race.  'Fear  not,  little  flock;  for  it  is  your  Father's 
good  pleasure  to  give  you  the  kingdom' " ! 

110 


Character  an  Interpreter 
of  Truth 


CHAPTER  IX 

Character  an  Interpreter 
of  Truth 

THE   HOUSEHOLDER   AND   HIS   TREASURE 

Matt.  13:52 

Text. — ''^E'very  scribe  nuho  hath  been  made  a  disciple  to  the  kingdom  oj 

hea'ven  is  like  unto  a  man  that  is  a  householder,  nvho  bringeth  forth 

out  of  his  treasure  things  neiv  and  old,  " — Matt.  13  :  52 

"Truth  is  one, 
And  in  all  lands  beneath  the  sun, 
Whoso  hath  eyes  to  see,  may  see 
The  tokens  of  its  unity." 

AH  yes,  whoso  hath  eyes  to  see !  But,  alas, 
all  have  not  eyes;  or  having  eyes,  see  not 
Not  only  do  many  fail  to  discern  the  unity 
of  truth,  but  they  fail  to  discover  even  the 
most  transparent  meaning  of  truth.  For 
whoever  would  see  the  real  meaning  in  the  sim- 
plest truth  must  have  not  eyes  alone,  but  a  mind  behind 
the  eyes,  and  behind  that  a  soul. 

I  know  that  the  popular  analysis  resolves  sight  into 
three  prime  factors — eyes  to  look,  an  object  to  look  at, 
and  light  to  transmute  looking  into  seeing;  but  this 
analysis  is  incomplete  unless  we  include  in  our  thought 
of  the  eye  all  that  goes  with  it  of  mind  and  soul  to 
affect  its  working.  The  eagle  from  his  rocky  eyrie  or 
the  wild  mountain  goat  of  the  Alps  looks  out  over  mag- 
nificent peaks  and  crags  with  eyes  of  extraordinary  vis- 
ual power;  but  what  is  the  seeing  of  either  of  these 
by  comparison  with  that  of  a  man,  especially  if  that  man 

113 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

be  an  artist?  His  eye  may  be  dim  and  his  vision  im- 
perfect, yet  with  whatsoever  defects  and  limitations  of 
vision,  he  sees  more  at  a  single  glance  from  some  lofty 
vantage-point  than  has  been  seen  by  all  the  wild  crea- 
tures since  time  began;  for  behind  his  eye  is  a  mind. 
'  Carry  the  thought  a  step  further.  The  visions  or 
seeings  of  different  men  differ  one  from  another  no  less 
widely  than  the  vision  of  a  man  differs  from  that  of  an 
animal.  One  man  has  no  eye  for  symmetry  of  form ;  an- 
other cannot  distinguish  beauty  of  coloring.  One  will 
see  more  in  a  square  mile  of  travel  than  another  will 
discover  while  exploring  a  continent.  For  one  a  single 
blossom  contains  marvels  which  his  neighbor  would  not 
find  in  the  whole  vegetable  creation.  Here  is  a  man  who 
sees  no  beauty  in  a  landscape,  no  grandeur  in  the  ocean, 
no  glory  in  the  mountains,  mist-veiled  and  blue.  There 
in  his  brother  to  whom  these  sights  bring  a  thrill  of 
delight  or  a  profound  sense  of  awe. 

We  also  perceive  a  like  diversity  in  the  outlook  upon 
life.  There  are  eyes  that  see  in  life  only  a  dull  and  weari- 
some necessity,  and  in  men  a  most  uninteresting  race 
of  beings  not  far  removed  from  the  apes.  To  other 
eyes  every  day  of  life  brings  its  fresh  inspiration  and 
delight,  and  every  new  acquaintance  is  a  repository  of 
unknown  possibilities.  A  Carlyle  looks  out  over  the 
English  nation  and  mutters,  "Forty  million  people,  most- 
ly fools!'*  A  Gregory,  seeing  several  fair-haired  Sax- 
on youths  in  the  Roman  slave-market  and  being  told 
that  they  were  called  "Angles,"  says,  "Call  them  rather 
'Angels/  "  and  gives  himself  no  rest  till  he  has  assured 
the  evangelization  of  Britain. 

How  shall  we  account  for  this  diversity  in  the  seeing 
of  different  men?  Clearly  it  is  not  due  to  difference  in 
the  physical  eye;  nor  is  it  wholly  in  the  mental  vision. 
Variations  of  intellectual  power  or  keenness  do  not  ex- 
plain all  the  diversities  of  result,  for  the  brightest  minds 
often  fail  to  discover  things  which  reveal  themselves  in- 

114 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  ^  HIS  TREASURE 

stantly  to  minds  of  duller  mold.  If,  then,  the  physical 
and  the  mental  organs  are  insufficient  to  solve  this  rid- 
dle of  human  seeing,  we  must  look  deeper  than  these; 
we  must  take  into  account  the  moral  and  spiritual  ele- 
ments of  our  being.  In  a  word,  character  must  be  rec- 
ognized as  a  significant  factor  in  vision.  And  if  this 
be  true  of  literal  seeing,  the  seeing  that  has  to  do  with 
the  material  universe  and  with  the  outward  life  of  man, 
how  much  more  true  is  it  of  that  seeing  which  deals 
with  the  immaterial  and  the  abstract — with  the  percep- 
tion of  truth! 

Now  this  is,  if  I  mistake  not,  precisely  the  thought 
that  Jesus  seeks  to  unfold  in  the  parable  of  The  House- 
holder and  His  Treasure.  The  parable  has  been  sadly 
neglected,  and  probably  few  readers  of  Scripture  think 
of  it  as  a  parable  at  all.  It  has  been  passed  over  in 
silence  by  the  leading  expositors,  for  some  unexplained 
reason,  and  the  example  thus  set  has  been  followed  al- 
most universally  by  the  host  of  minor  exegetes.  Never- 
theless we  have  here  a  true  parable  and  one  that  is  di- 
rectly in  line  with  the  others  recorded  in  the  same  chap- 
ter. More  than  this,  it  is  closely  interwoven  with  the 
rest  and  its  message  is  essential  to  the  completeness  of 
the  Master's  thought. 

Stripped  of  metaphor  and  translated  into  the  language 
of  common  life,  the  suggestion  of  the  parable  may  be  ex- 
pressed in  a  single  phrase :  Christly  character  a  necessary 
factor  in  the  interpretation  of  divine  truth. 

The  two  figures  that  present  themselves  to  us  for 
comparison  are  a  scribe  and  a  householder.  The  former 
is  described  as  "a  scribe  who  hath  been  made  a  disciple 
to  the  kingdom  of  heaven,"  that  is  to  say,  "Every  teacher 
or  student  of  divine  truth  who  diligently  cultivates  the 
Christly  character."  Many  a  student  and  teacher  of 
truth  brings  to  his  work  his  intellect  alone.  Not  a  few 
Bible  students  even  rely  implicitly  and  solely  upon  gram- 
mar, lexicon,  concordance  and  commentary  for  the  in- 

115 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

terpretation  of  its  message.  They  enter  upon  their  task 
equipped  with  all  the  learning  of  the  schools,  and  con- 
sider that  sufficient  for  the  discovery  of  all  that  the  Bible 
contains.  Others  there  are  who  recognize  the  value  of 
these  things,  but  recognize  also  the  fact  that  in  them- 
selves they  are  not  adequate  for  the  complete  interpre- 
tation of  the  divine  message.  That  requires  a  devout 
approach  and  a  spiritual  insight.  Scholarship  as  it  is 
commonly  defined  must  be  reenforced  by  character; 
learning  must  be  subordinated  to  spirit;  mind  must  be 
servant  of  soul.  And  it  is  this  latter  class,  unfortunately 
a  class  that  is  always  in  the  minority  even  among  Chris- 
tian students,  whom  Jesus  represents  as  scribes  who 
have  been  made  disciples  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
They  are  the  men  who  seek  not  merely  the  body  of 
truth,  i.  e.,  the  bare  facts  that  may  be  classified  and 
tabulated,  but  the  very  soul  of  truth,  truth  that  applies 
to  life  and  conduct,  and  that  makes  for  the  perfection  of 
character. 

The  second  figure  in  the  comparison  is  a  householder 
"who  bringeth  forth  out  of  his  treasure  things  new  and 
old."  Do  you  catch  the  meaning  of  the  similitude? 
This,  is  it  not?  In  whatever  field  such  a  student  works 
he  will  continually  discover  new  truths  and  new  mean- 
ings in  old  truths.  Whether  he  investigate  the  reve- 
lation of  God  in  nature  or  study  the  record  of  his  do- 
ings upon  the  written  page,  he  will  daily  reap  a  harvest 
of  fresh  and  helpful  thought.  Though  poorly  equipped 
with  the  learning  of  the  schools,  his  findings  will  be  im- 
measurably richer  than  the  findings  of  his  brother  who 
brings  to  his  task  the  best  mental  training  and  talent 
without  the  Christly  character. 

We  may  not  be  able  to  explain  the  fact,  but  fact  it  is 
none  the  less,  that  the  universe  has  always  yielded  its  se- 
crets to  Christly  men  or  to  men  who  are  striving  for 
Christliness,  while  it  has  withheld  them  from  the  ungodly. 
Even  in  a  material  sense  this  is  true.     The  vast  material 

116 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  &  HIS  TREASURE 

resources  of  the  world  have  remained  hidden  till  men 
have  sought  them  in  the  spirit  of  the  Christ.  All  great 
inventions  and  discoveries  have  come  to  Christian  na- 
tions. The  discoveries  of  pagan  nations  are  trifles  be- 
side them.  Did  the  pagan  Chinese  invent  printing? 
No !  The  possibilities  and  methods  of  printing  present- 
ed themselves  to  the  Chinese,  but  they  were  unable  to 
grasp  them  in  any  practical  fashion.  It  was  left  for  a 
Christian  Gutenberg  to  invent  the  printing-press  and 
give  it  to  the  world.  Did  heathen  Norsemen  discover 
America?  No!  They  came  to  America,  stumbled  upon 
it  as  it  were,  and  returned  to  their  homes  no  wiser  than 
they  came.  The  new  continent  still  lay  hidden  from  the 
eyes  of  men  till  a  Christian  Columbus  found  it  and  knew 
what  he  had  found.  For  heathen  nations  the  earth  con- 
tained its  stores  of  coal,  its  rich  treasures  of  power, 
its  abundant  resources  of  food  supply ;  but  only  Christian 
peoples  have  been  able  in  any  complete  manner  to  bring 
forth  and  interpret  and  utilize  these.  Men  talk  about 
"the  lost  arts"  of  antiquity;  but  magnify  those  lost  arts 
as  you  please,  and  they  are  a  mere  cipher  by  contrast 
with  the  arts  that  the  ancients  never  found. 

Throughout  the  ages  the  rocks  have  told  their  silent 
story  of  creation  and  progress,  and  in  all  lands  the  ruins 
and  the  monuments  of  the  past  have  been  exposed  to 
the  eyes  of  men;  yet  the  heathen  have  no  science  of 
geology  or  archeology.  These  are  the  developments 
of  Christian  civilization.  For  centuries  uncounted  the 
heathen  have  tried  to  read  the  revelation  that  shines  up- 
on the  scroll  of  the  heavens,  and  what  have  they  made 
of  it?  Only  a  senseless  and  utterly  misleading  super- 
stition known  as  astrology.  Studying  the  same  limit- 
less page,  the  Christian  world  has  seen  unfolded  there 
the  science  of  astronomy  through  whose  voice,  as  never 
before,  "the  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God."  In- 
stead of  a  jumble  of  mysterious  and  causeless  influences, 

117 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

our  Newtons  and  Proctors  and  Keplers  have  discovered 
a  marvelous  system  of  laws  and  a  unity  of  design  and 
operation  manifesting  themselves  in  every  part  of  the 
infinite  universe  and  testifying  to  the  infinite  wisdom  and 
power  of  the  Creator.  From  this  treasure-house  many 
things  new  are  being  brought  forth  year  after  year. 

Nor  is  it  otherwise  in  the  study  of  life.  How  many 
shepherds,  for  example,  from  earliest  times  have  been 
familiar  with  all  the  numerous  duties  and  relations  of 
the  shepherd  life  and  have  found  in  them  only  common- 
place drudgery  and  wearisome  labor !  But  a  godly  David 
looks  upon  that  life  with  an  eye  made  keen  by  the 
search  for  true  and  noble  character,  and  it  glistens  with 
a  marvelous  message  of  the  love  and  care  of  God.  As 
a  result  the  world  is  enriched  by  the  possession  of  a 
Shepherd  Psalm.  The  Christ  looks  upon  the  same  page 
of  life  and  it  unfolds  to  him  the  matchless  parable  of 
The  Lost  Sheep  and  the  simile  of  The  Good  Shepherd. 
Thoughtless  multitudes  attend  the  Greek  games  and  see 
in  them  merely  exhibitions  of  physical  skill  or  endurance, 
the  passing  enjoyment  of  an  hour  often  brutalizing  in 
its  influence  and  degrading  in  its  associations.  A  de- 
vout Paul  watches  them,  and  for  him  they  take  on  ^ 
deeper  meaning  as  wrestler  and  racer,  and,  including 
even  the  cruel  gladiator,  become  suggestive  types  of 
Christian  discipleship  and  noblest  service. 

Best  of  all  illustrations  of  this  truth  is  found  in  the 
chapter  in  which  our  parable  occurs.  Here  is  not  one 
picture  but  a  series  of  pictures  drawn  from  the  most 
commonplace  walks  and  occupations  of  life,  the  husband- 
man in  the  field,  the  housewife  in  the  kitchen,  the  mer- 
chantman in  the  market-place,  the  fisherman  on  the  lake. 
What  had  these  for  the  multitude  but  suggestions  of 
toil  and  strife  and  greed  and  worldliness?  But  to  the 
mind  of  the  Christ  they  spoke  deathless  messages  of 
truth,  and  interpreted  by  him  they  were  forever  trans- 
formed into  types  of  highest  living.     What  wonders  of 

118 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  &  HIS  TREASURE 

new  thought  were  brought  forth  from  very  old  things 
that  day  by  the  seaside !  For  behind  the  eyes  that  looked 
upon  these  things,  behind  the  intellect  that  comprehended 
their  facts  and  relations,  was  a  perfect  character,  a  di- 
vine purpose  that  could  appreciate  their  larger  possibili- 
ties and  their  deeper  meanings  and  could  bring  these 
out  in  such  manner  that  others  could  see  them  also. 

The  Christly  character,  then,  is  the  supreme  requisite 
for  the  interpretation  of  God's  truth  as  revealed  in  na- 
ture. It  is  Godlikeness  that,  more  than  anything  else,  en- 
ables us  to  think  God's  thoughts  after  him,  so  that  we 
can  understand  his  workings  in  the  material  universe 
and  use  his  laws  and  forces  for  our  own  highest  good. 
It  is  character,  also,  that  enables  us  rightly  to  interpret 
the  meaning  of  life  and  to  discover  in  the  experiences 
and  activities  of  every  day  the  manifestations  of  God's 
presence  and  the  revelations  of  his  will. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Another  application  of  the  same  truth 
remains.  Not  only  is  the  Christly  character  necessary 
to  the  complete  interpretation  of  God's  revelation  in  na- 
ture and  in  life,  it  is  equally  necessary  to  a  clear  and 
worthy  interpretation  of  God's  written  message.  With- 
out that  character  the  spoken  word  and  the  written  record 
are  alike  mysterious  and  without  meaning.  We  call  the 
Bible  God's  Book,  and  we  study  it  to  learn  his  will  and 
to  bring  ourselves  into  harmony  with  his  Spirit  and  life ; 
but  it  makes  a  vast  difference  how  we  study  the  Book, 
and  with  what  equipment  we  approach  its  pages.  Many 
have  searched  the  Scriptures  long  and  earnestly  in  vain. 
To  them  the  pages  yielded  no  fruit  of  enlightenment  or 
strength  or  spiritual  growth.  The  Book  is  sealed  to 
their  eyes.  They  cannot  discover  its  message.  So  was 
it  with  the  Pharisees  of  our  Lord's  time.  Though  fa- 
miliar with  every  part  of  their  Scriptures,  they  were 
strangely  blind  to  the  truths  which  those  Scriptures 
taught  in  the  plainest  manner.  To  others  the  Book  is 
a  mine  of  spiritual  treasure,   a  perennial    fountain  of 

119 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

spiritual  light  and  inspiration.  What  is  the  difference? 
Is  it  a  matter  of  intellect  alone?  Clearly  not;  for  not  a 
few  of  those  who  find  nothing  in  the  Bible  are  men  and 
women  of  exceptional  intellectual  power  and  cultivation. 
The  Pharisees  and  the  scribes  were  the  scholars  of  their 
age;  the  Paines  and  Voltaires  and  Ingersolls  of  later 
times  have  often  been  men  of  brilliant  intellectual  gifts. 
What  then?  It  is  a  question  of  character  and  spirit. 
Even  God's  Word  is  voiceless  to  the  godless  soul,  and 
speaks  only  in  riddles  or  whispers  to  him  who  lacks  the 
Christly  purpose  in  his  study. 

The  present  age  is  an  age  of  intellectualism.  We  mag- 
nify the  value  of  scholarship  in  religion  as  in  all  things 
else,  and  rightly  so.  Careful  study  and  mental  acumen 
with  thorough  training  are  matters  of  no  trifling  impor- 
tance; yet  does  not  the  Bible  or  any  similar  book  yield 
its  most  precious  truths  in  response  to  the  demands  of 
scholarship  alone.  Dwight  L.  Moody,  the  unlearned 
evangelist  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  many  others 
even  less  scholarly  than  he,  have  brought  forth  from  the 
Bible  treasures  of  spiritual  truth  far  richer  than  have 
been  discovered  by  the  profoundest  students  of  our  time. 
Why?  Because  they  brought  to  the  study  of  the  Word 
a  devout  spirit  and  a  character  ever  reaching  upward  to- 
ward the  divine.  He  who  would  find  the  most  and  best 
in  his  Bible  must  read  it  not  merely  in  the  light  of  gram- 
mar and  lexicon  and  commentary,  but  on  his  knees  with 
a  prayer  upon  his  lips  and  a  devout  purpose  in  his  heart 
to  seek  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The  Christly  character 
and  that  alone  can  unlock  the  profoundest  secrets  of 
God's  Book.  Truly  "the  secret  of  the  Lord  is  with 
them  that  fear  him." 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  have  no  sympathy  with 
the  outcry  of  narrow  minds  against  modern  scholarship. 
Not  for  a  moment  would  I  question  the  value  of  the 
most  thorough  critical  study  of  the  Bible;  for  the  critics 
have  done  priceless  service  for  the  world.     Neverthe- 

120 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  &  HIS  TREASURE 

less  I  assert  that  learning  is  subordinate  to  character  in 
the  interpretation  of  truth.  It  is  imperative  that  we 
bring  to  our  study  all  the  learning  possible;  but  if  we 
cannot  have  both  learning  and  Christly  character,  then 
by  all  means  let  us  have  character.  As  a  leading  think,-; 
er  recently  said,  "Scholarship  is  important,  the  scien- 
tific methods  are  of  inestimable  value,  but  spiritual  power 
and  a  consciousness  of  the  presence  of  God  are  absolutely 
vital."  Do  we  not  all  of  us  appreciate  the  value  of 
keen  and  perfect  physical  vision?  Nevertheless  we 
know  that  defective  vision  with  a  keen  mind  will  see 
more  than  the  keenest  vision  with  a  dull  mind.  Even  so 
a  devout  and  godly  soul  with  little  learning  will  inter- 
pret God  more  surely  in  word  or  work  than  the  keenest 
intellect  without  such  a  character.  A  Wesley  or  a  Kitto 
will  find  more  truth  and  more  helpful  truth  than  a 
Strauss  and  a  Rousseau;  and  some  simple-minded  old 
woman  will  discover  rare  gems  that  have  eluded  the 
search  of  the  whole  Tubingen  school. 

One  more  suggestion  our  parable  offers  us.  It  is 
this :  The  disciple  of  the  kingdom  may  expect  to  make 
continually  progressive  discoveries  in  the  realm  of  di- 
vine truth.  The  significance  of  any  revelation  will  not 
be  exhausted  by  a  single  interpretation.  Every  new 
reading  will  bring  out  its  new  message  harmonizing  with 
and  filling  out  the  old.  The  truth  discovered  yesterday 
will  have  a  larger  meaning  to-day^  or  it  may  even  be 
eclipsed  by  a  wholly  fresh  truth.  So  life  will  be  a  con- 
tinuous panorama  and  its  meaning  will  unfold  in  unex- 
pected ways.  The  Book,  too,  will  speak  its  new  mes- 
sages. Come  to  the  Bible  with  the  intellect  alone,  and 
it  speaks  ever  one  and  the  same  truth.  There  is  no 
progress,  no  growth.  Come  to  it  with  the  "hunger  and 
thirst  for  righteousness"  that  is  implied  in  the  Christly 
character,  and  the  old  Book  will  glow  with  new  truth  at 
every  advancing  step.  What  it  spoke  yesterday  will 
not  be  less  true  to-day,  but  it  will  be  less  complete,  less 

131 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

satisfying.  The  old  parables  read  hundreds  of  times 
will  contribute  each  time  something  new  for  life  and 
thought.  The  most  familiar  and  hackneyed  passages 
will  never  become  dull  or  worthless,  because  they  will 
reveal  new  meanings.  That  is  why  the  Bible  has  retained 
its  freshness  through  the  passing  centuries.  It  is 
the  power  of  a  growing  Christliness  in  individuals  and 
in  the  Christian  Church  making  ever  new  applications 
of  the  old  teachings.  In  some  sense  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury interpretation  of  the  gospel  may  be  no  better  than 
that  of  the  tenth  century,  but  it  is  more  perfectly  adapt- 
ed to  the  needs  of  the  twentieth  century  in  its  life  and 
thought. 

How  fittingly  this  parable  concludes  the  discourse  by 
the  sea!  At  the  beginning  of  that  discourse  Jesus  had 
appealed  to  his  hearers  to  attend  to  what  he  should  say, 
that  his  words  might  not  fail  to  produce  their  due  im- 
pression upon  their  minds.  Now  he  appeals  to  them  to 
aim  at  the  heavenly  character  as  the  essential  condi- 
tion of  understanding  his  words  in  their  largest  signifi- 
cance. It  is  well  to  study  truth  diligently,  to  be  at- 
tentive, alert,  earnest;  but  unless  to  this  is  added  a 
genuine  aspiration  toward  that  which  is  highest  in 
character  and  life,  the  effort  and  the  study  will  not 
yield  their  richest  fruit. 

Is  there  any  danger  that  we  shall  be  too  scholarly  in 
our  approach  to  God  ?  Never !  That  is  not  the  danger, 
but  that  our  scholarship  shall  become  too  self-sufficient, 
that  intellect  shall  arrogate  to  itself  the  supreme  place 
that  belongs  only  to  character.  Enthrone  Christ  in  the 
heart,  be  reverent,  humble,  devout,  then  welcome  learn- 
ing, welcome  science,  welcome  art,  invention,  discovery, 
and  all  other  acquisitions  of  modern  progress;  for 
they  will  thus  become  effective  instruments  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  God's  message  to  mankind. 

The  true  attitude  of  all  Christian  scholarship  has  been 

122 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  &  HIS  TREASURE 


graphically  presented  to  us  by  Whittier.  You  remember 
the  lines: — 

"On  the  isle  of  Penikese, 
Ringed  about  by  sapphire  seas, 
Fanned  by  breezes  salt  and  cool, 
Stood    the    Master    with    his    school. 

Said  the  Master  to  the  youth : 
We  have  come  in  search  of  truth, 
Trying  with  uncertain  key 
Door  by  door  of  mystery. 

Of  our  weakness  made  aware. 
On  the  threshold  of  our  task 
Let  us  light  and  guidance  ask, 
Let  us  pause  in  silent  prayer!" 

Come  to  the  study  of  God's  revelation  in  this  spirit, 
and  every  instrumentality  you  employ  shall  be  potent  for 
discovery  and  interpretation.  So  shall  all  doors  of  mys- 
tery be  unlocked,  and  to  you  shall  open  the  secrets  of 
divinest  truth  and  you  shall  enrich  many  souls  as  you 
enrich  your  own. 


123 


The  Equation  of 
Character 


CHAPTER  X 

The  Equation  of 
Character 

THE  VINEYARD  LABORERS 

Matt.  20:1-16 

Text. — *^The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like  unto  a  man  .  .  .  luho  nvent 

out  .  ,  .  to  hire  laborers  into  his  'vineyard.  " — Matt.  20:1 

HUMAN  life  is  a  common  fraction.  Oppor- 
tunity is  its  denominator;  service  is  its 
numerator;  and  character  or  destiny  is  the 
quotient,  the  value  of  the  fraction. 
In  every  spiritual  fraction  God  writes 
down  the  denominator — opportunity,  talent,  privilege; 
all  these  are  divine  gifts.  Then  he  leaves  man  to  write 
the  numerator — service,  achievement,  devotion ;  and  to 
work  out  the  result  in  personal  worth  and  destiny. 
The  common  complaint  charges  God  with  writing  the  de- 
nominator too  small.  We  murmur  that  our  opportuni- 
ties are  few,  our  privileges  scanty.  Jealous  of  the 
larger  denominators  of  other  lives,  we  often  fail  to  write 
into  our  own  any  numerator  of  service,  and  so  the  frac- 
tion of  our  lives  is  worthless. 

A  little  study  of  simple  arithmetic  ought  to  be  a  per- 
manent cure  for  this  form  of  jealousy  and  an  inspiration 
to  hopeful  and  grateful  service.  You  recall  the  old 
formula : — "To  increase  a  fraction,  multiply  the  numer- 
ator or  divide  the  denominator.  To  decrease  a  frac- 
tion, multiply  the  denominator  or  divide  the  numera- 
tor." That  is  to  say,  the  larger  the  denominator,  the 
smaller  the  fraction.    Why,  then,  should  you  murmur  at 

127 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

the  smallness  of  your  gifts  and  opportunities,  since  larger 
opportunities  would  make  your  life  smaller  unless  you 
write  over  them  the  larger  numerator  of  increasingly 
diligent  and  faithful  service? 

The  man  with  ten  talents  must  divide  every  service 
and  every  attainment  by  ten  to  get  its  real  value;  the 
man  with  five  talents  must  reckon  continually  by  five, 
whereas  the  man  with  only  one  talent  may  estimate 
every  service  at  its  full  value,  since  dividing  by  unity 
leaves  the  numerator  undiminished. 

The  spiritual  or  moral  value  of  every  life,  therefore, 
may  be  expressed  in  the  form  of  an  arithmetical  equa- 
tion as  follows: — 

CHARACTER  =  ^"""'" 


Opportunity 


And  this  may  well  be  called — The  Equation  of  Charac- 
ter. 

In  this  equation  is  embodied  precisely  the  truth  which 
our  Lord  illustrates  and  enforces  in  the  parable  of  The 
Vineyard  Laborers.  Here  as  everywhere  else  in  the  New 
Testament  the  phrase  "kingdom  of  heaven"  signifies  the 
heavenly  life  in  the  soul  and  in  the  race,  the  Christly 
character  that  brings  present  righteousness  and  peace 
and  joy,  and  that  enfolds  within  itself  our  future  des- 
tiny, salvation  and  the  life  eternal,  as  the  bud  enfolds 
the  rose.  It  is  a  phrase  that  gathers  up  and  expresses 
in  concisest  form  all  the  manifold  results  and  outcomes 
of  our  life  from  whatever  standpoint  we  may  view  them. 
The  parable  represents  to  us  one  of  the  great  principles 
by  which  these  are  wrought  out.  Briefly  stated,  it  says 
to  us,  "The  result  of  your  life  and  mine  is  not  determined 
solely  by  our  opportunities  and  privileges  and  favor- 
ing circumstances,  which  are  the  gifts  of  God.  Nor,  on 
the  other  hand,  can  it  be  estimated  by  our  achievements 
alone,  by  the  things  which  we  accomplish  and  acquire 
through  our  human  effort.    Rather  is  that  result  meas- 

128 


THE     VINEYARD     LABORERS 

ured  by  the  ratio  between  the  divine  gift  and  the  human 
service."  Not  the  multitude  nor  the  magnitude  of  our  op- 
portunities, but  the  use  we  make  of  such  opportunities 
as  we  have,  whether  small  or  great,,  whether  many  or 
few,  is  the  test  of  our  worth,  the  measure  of  our  reward. 

Studying  the  parable  in  detail,  it  falls  naturally  into 
three  divisions,  representing  successively  the  three  ele- 
ments of  our  spiritual  equation  and  leading  us  step  by 
step  to  its  divine  solution. 

The  first  division  consists  of  two  verses,  which  tell 
us  how  a  certain  man  went  out  one  morning  to  hire 
laborers  for  his  vineyard.  It  is  a  simple  picture  of 
human  life  in  which  the  key-note  is  Service.  And  its 
interpretation  is  equally  simple.    Listen  to  its  message. 

Character  is  attained  only  by  means  of  service.  Salva- 
tion comes  only  through  service.  Spiritual  rewards  or 
spiritual  achievements  involve  spiritual  service.  Without 
service  there  is  no  true  life  either  physical  or  spiritual. 
The  divine  spark  is  implanted  in  the  soul  by  the  Holy 
Spirit;  but  it  must  be  nourished,  fanned  to  a  flame, 
made  to  glow  with  a  continual  heat,  by  our  own  effort 
in  behalf  of  others.  This  is  a  truth  that  runs  all  through 
the  New  Testament. 

You  remember  how  the  apostle  Peter  expresses  this 
eternal  relation  between  opportunity,  service  and  salva- 
tion: "Seeing  that  his  divine  power  hath  granted  unto 
us  all  things  that  pertain  unto  life  and  godliness"  (there 
is  opportunity;  it  must  be  followed  by  service),  "for  this 
very  cause,  adding  on  your  part  all  diligence,  in  your 
faith  supply  virtue ;  and  in  your  virtue  knowledge,"  etc. 
(And  the  reward  is  assured.)  "For  thus  shall  be  richly 
supplied  unto  you  the  entrance  into  the  eternal  kingdom 
of  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ."  And  St.  Paul 
puts  the  same  thought  in  his  epistle  to  the  Philippians: 
"Work  out  your  own  salvation  with  fear  and  trembling" 
(service  obtaining  the  reward),  "for  it  is  God  who  work- 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

eth  in  you"  (i.  e.,  it  is  God  that  gives  the  opportunity 
to  work). 

Salvation,  in  the  largest  sense  of  the  word,  as  a  com- 
plete restoration  of  the  divine  character,  can  be  enjoyed 
only  when  we  work  together  with  God.  It  is  God  working 
in  us  to  create  that  new  spiritual  life  which  we  must 
work  out  or  manifest  in  godly  service.  It  is  God  im- 
parting to  us  the  needful  power  which  we  must  use 
diligently  in  adding  to  faith  virtue  and  knowledge  and 
temperance  and  patience  and  all  the  other  graces  and 
virtues  if  we  would  obtain  an  entrance  into  the  eternal 
kingdom  of  the  Christly  character.  Unless  we  are  will- 
ing thus  to  work  with  God,  we  shall  pray  in  vain  for 
our  own  salvation. 

"Hope  not  the  cure  of  sin  till  self  is  dead : 
Forget  it  in  love's  service,  and  the  debt 
Thou  canst  not  pay,  the  angels  shall  forget : 
Heaven's  gate  is  shut  to  him  who  comes  alone ; 
Save  thou  a  soul,  and  it  shall  save  thine  own." 

Turn  now  to  the  second  division  of  the  parable.  Its 
key-word  is  Opportunity.  It  includes  five  verses,  and  tells 
us  how  the  householder  went  out  again  and  again 
during  the  day  into  the  market-place  to  hire  more  labor- 
ers, repeating  his  calls  even  until  the  eleventh  hour. 
Like  the  first,  this  scene  presents  no  extraordinary  fea- 
tures. In  every  detail  it  is  as  true  to  life  as  the  scene 
which  goes  before,  and  its  meaning  is  equally  plain. 

When  we  are  ready  for  service,  then  comes  the  oppor- 
tunity for  service.  Each  time  the  householder  goes 
forth,  he  employs  all  whom  he  finds,  and  he  goes  till  the 
very  last  hour  of  the  day.  Note,  in  this  connection, 
two  facts.  First,  the  men  who  are  employed  are  in 
the  market-place.  Second,  they  are  standing.  That 
is,  they  are  in  the  right  place  and  in  the  right  attitude. 
Both  facts  indicate  readiness  for  service.     The  house- 

130 


THE     VINEYARD     LABORERS 

holder  does  not  search  the  streets,  he  does  not  approach 
those  who  are  sitting  about  the  bazaars  or  loafing  on 
the  street  corners. 

These  facts  are  suggestive.  In  our  land  to-day  there 
is  a  vast  army  of  men  and  women  out  of  employment, 
many  of  whom  claim  to  be  looking  for  work  and  are 
often  heard  complaining  because  no  work  comes  to  them. 
Yet  very  often  their  appearance  and  attitude  do  not  in- 
dicate real  readiness  for  work,  and  they  are  not  found 
in  the  places  where  work  seeks  for  workers.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  they  are  not  ready  for  work.  They  wish  for 
the  rewards  of  labor,  but  for  labor  itself  they  have  no 
relish. 

These  have  their  counterpart  in  the  Church  of  Christ. 
Are  not  we  ourselves  actuated  many  times  by  their  spirit? 
How  often  do  we  pray  for  the  rewards  of  service,  for 
spiritual  growth  and  enlargement  and  joy,  and  all  the 
while  we  carefully  avoid  the  market-place  whenever  the 
Lord  or  his  stewards  are  there  seeking  for  laborers  in 
the  vineyard !  We  complain  of  spiritual  poverty  and 
leanness,  and  when  some  needed  but  not  wholly  agree- 
able work  is  presented  to  us  we  hold  back  and  refuse 
to  undertake  it. 

Do  you  feel  that  your  life  is  wanting  in  opportunity 
to  do  God's  work  and  to  share  in  his  rewards?  Then 
let  the  Lord  find  you  in  the  market-place,  standing,  when 
he  comes  for  workers  and  he  will  surely  call  you  to 
service.  In  other  words,  be  ready,  alert,  willing  to  take 
whatever  chance  be  given  you,  and  you  will  not  long 
remain  in  idleness. 

Is  not  this  picture  full  of  encouragement?  Per- 
haps you  are  conscious  that  many  precious  hours  of 
your  day  have  flown.  You  were  not  in  the  market- 
place at  dawn.  It  may  be  that  the  third  hour  is  past, 
and  also  the  sixth.  Thank  God  the  ninth  hour  or  the 
eleventh  still  remains!  Do  not  despair.  The  Lord  will 
come  again  if  you  are  even  now  ready  for  him.       Some 

131 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

opportunity  of  service  may  still  be  yours.  Never  did 
the  Lord  of  the  vineyard  visit  the  market-place  so  fre- 
quently, never  did  he  call  so  persistently  for  laborers  as 
now.  And  in  no  land  is  the  call  so  imperative  as  ours. 
The  harvest  is  waiting.  Work  abounds  for  all  who  are 
ready  and  willing.     Hear  the  clarion  call: 

"We  are  living,  we  are  dwelling, 
In  a  grand  and  awful  time, 
In  an  age  on  ages  telling; 
To  be  living  is  sublime. 
Oh,  let  all  the  soul  within  you 
For  the  truth's  sake  go  abroad. 
Strike !  let  every  nerve  and  sinew 
Tell  on  ages,  tell  for  God!" 

Not  a  disciple  need  remain  one  moment  in  idleness. 
Could  any  truth  be  more  encouraging? 

But  there  is  also  another  side.  Remember — ^the  night 
Cometh!  How  the  glorious  day  rushes  by!  With  what 
terrible  distinctness  the  clock  strikes  off  the  hours!  It 
is  the  third  hour,  the  sixth  hour,  the  ninth  hour,  the 
eleventh  — and  the  night  cometh!  Opportunity  is  giv- 
ing place  to  fate.  Privilege  congeals  into  destiny. 
Idleness  means  loss  of  opportunity,  loss  of  privilege,,  loss 
of  power,  and  at  last  death.    Yes,  the  night  cometh  ! 

A  single  scene  remains.  Our  story  reveals  a  third 
division  comprising  nine  verses;  and  this  is  the  picture 
which  these  verses  present  to  us.  The  busy  day  has  at 
length  drawn  to  its  close.  The  shadows  of  evening  be- 
gin to  fall  over  the  earth  and  toil  must  cease.  Again 
the  householder  calls  the  laborers,  this  time  not  to  ser- 
vice but  to  reward.  Bidding  his  steward  pay  them  in 
turn,  beginning  with  the  latest  comers,  he  pays  them  all 
alike,  a  penny  to  each  man.  A  fair  and  full  day's 
wage  paid  even  to  men  who  had  worked  but  a  single 
hour.     Seeing  this,   the  first   comers    grumble  because 

132 


THE     VINEYARD     LABORERS 

they  have  received  no  more  than  those  who  came  into 
the  vineyard  at  the  eleventh  hour.  What  says  the  house- 
holder? "Did  ye  not  agree  with  me  for  a  penny  ?  Take 
thy  due  and  depart.  May  I  not  do  as  I  please  with 
mine  own?" 

The  essential  thought  of  this  scene  is  Reward,  which 
reward  in  the  spiritual  world  we  may  translate  by  the 
word  Character  or  Salvation  or  Eternal  Life,  according 
to  the  point  of  view  from  which  we  consider  it. 

I  have  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  action  por- 
trayed in  the  two  preceding  sections  of  the  parable  was  in 
no  way  out  of  the  ordinary.  Not  so  with  this  scene. 
The  conduct  of  the  employer  in  this  final  settlement  is 
more  than  unusual.  It  is  extremely  unlikely  and  un- 
natural. It  sets  at  naught  all  our  commonly  accepted 
notions  of  thrift  and  justice.  It  is  wholly  outside  the 
science  of  economics  as  taught  in  our  schools  and  as  ap- 
plied in  the  every-day  relations  of  capital  and  labor.  It 
can  only  be  explained  as  an  act  of  good-natured  ca- 
price on  the  part  of  the  householder.  Yet,  arbitrary 
though  it  be  from  the  standpoint  of  our  imperfect  and 
limited  human  relations,,  I  think  that  we  can  see  in  it 
a  representation  of  that  which  in  the  perfect  conditions 
of  the  spiritual  life  is  neither  arbitrary  nor  unjust,  nay, 
rather  of  that  which  is  infinitely  just  and  fair.  In  any 
case  the  interpretation  is  unavoidable:  God  pays  his 
servants,  not  by  the  day  nor  by  the  piece,  but  by  dili- 
gence and  purpose.  The  spirit  of  service  is  the  basis 
of  reward.  Quality  is  more  than  quantity,  and  faith- 
fulness is  more  than  time. 

Now  I  venture  to  assert  that  this  method  of  reckon- 
ing is  not  in  flat  contradiction  to  the  highest  economic 
wisdom,  however  far  removed  it  may  be  from  our  com- 
mon and  even  necessary  practise  in  this  earthly  life.  In 
so  far  as  the  action  of  this  householder  was  arbitrary, 
a  simple  doing  "what  I  will  with  mine  own,"  it  fails  to 
represent  the  spirit  and  action  of  God  in  his  dealings  with 

133 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

men.  Grace  does  not  mean  good-natured  caprice.  It 
does  not  mean  unreasoning  benevolence.  It  does  not 
mean  a  careless  disregard  of  law  and  reliable  sequence 
in  the  relations  between  God  and  man.  Rather  does  it 
presuppose  the  strictest  justice  in  a  perfectly  fair  and 
equitable  system.  Grace  is  not  the  foil  of  law;  it  is  an 
essential  factor  in  the  working  of  perfect  law. 

The  first  and  most  inalienable  right  of  every  man  is 
the  right  of  opportunity.  The  world  does  not  owe  every 
man  a  living,  as  so  many  modern  would-be  economists 
declare;  but  the  world  does  owe  to  every  man  a  fair 
chance  to  earn  a  living.  Until  this  chance  is  given,  so- 
ciety has  no  claim  on  any  man.  But  when  the  oppor- 
tunity has  been  given,  the  world  justly  demands  that 
each  shall  use  it  to  make  his  own  living  and  to  enrich 
society.  Even  so  God  owes  to  every  human  being  whom 
he  has  created  the  opportunity  to  attain  the  Christlike 
character,  to  work  out  his  own  salvation.  But  when  the 
opportunity  has  been  given  it  becomes  each  man's  duty 
to  translate  the  opportunity  into  service  and  through 
service  into  character. 

When,  therefore,  Jesus  says,  "Many  that  are  first  shall 
be  last;  and  the  last  first,"  he  does  not  mean  to  tell  us 
that  the  principles  and  methods  of  the  heavenly  life  are 
utterly  at  variance  with  those  operating  in  the  present 
state  of  existence,  and  that  hereafter  we  shall  be  judged 
and  rewarded  by  standards  of  which  we  now  know  noth- 
ing. Rather  does  he  mean  that  the  principles  of  right- 
eousness^ which  are  often  hindered  and  perverted  in  their 
working  by  the  imperfections  of  human  society  and  the 
limitations  of  human  knowledge,  will  work  out  their  re- 
sults perfectly  in  the  unclouded  light  of  the  heavenly 
kingdom,  and  so  will  correct  many  an  error  of  present 
judgment  and  action.  Every  change  will  be  a  change 
of  correction,  not  of  subversion.  Motive  and  spirit 
will  be  clearly  revealed  and  will  have  their  proper  place 

134 


THE     VINEYARD     LABORERS 

in  the  account,,  and  the  adjustments  will  be  made  in  the 
light  of  omniscience. 

It  is  one  of  the  great  injustices,  growing  out  of  the 
present  imperfection  of  our  human  society  and  the  un- 
avoidable limitations  of  our  human  life,  that  many  who 
are  among  the  most  faithful  and  diligent  of  earth's  toilers 
receive  but  scant  reward  for  their  toil  because  of  their 
small  opportunities,  while  others  with  larger  opportu- 
nities which  they  have  used  far  less  faithfully  secure 
greatest  returns.  In  fact,  many  who  do  not  toil  at  all 
enjoy  a  rich  inheritance  which  has  come  to  them  from 
others  or  live  a  life  that  is  really  parasitic.  In  a  per- 
fectly just  and  wise  social  system  the  highest  awards 
would  always  go  to  the  most  faithful  and  diligent  toilers, 
to  those  who  made  the  most  of  their  opportunities 
whether  those  opportunities  be  great  or  small. 

This  is  the  principle  and  the  practise  in  God's  king- 
dom. It  is  the  rule  that  is  working  itself  out  both  in 
the  present  life  and  in  the  life  to  come  in  relation  to  the 
really  vital  matters.  To  whom  little  is  given,  of  him  lit- 
tle is  required,  but  to  whom  God  commits  much,  of 
him  he  requires  the  more.  The  thief  on  the  cross,  em- 
bracing the  first  opportunity  that  had  come  to  him  to 
seek  Christ's  mercy,  is  welcomed  to  Paradise  just  as 
heartily  as  the  saint  who  has  built  up  a  noble  and 
respected  character  out  of  the  superior  opportunities  of 
half  a  century. 

"She  hath  done  what  she  could,"  is  the  expression 
of  supreme  merit  in  the  Gospel.  It  is  not,  "She  hath 
done  some  great  thing,"  "She  hath  achieved  great  suc- 
cess or  fame,"  "She  hath  performed  some  extraordinary 
act  of  beneficence  or  kindness,"  but  "what  she  could." 
Opportunity  used  to  the  full,  that  is  perfection,  that 
calls  forth  the  divine  approval  and  secures  the  eternal 
reward. 

I  repeat,  this  is  the  law  that  governs  in  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.     It  is  the  law  which  will  be  perfectly  re- 

135 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

vealed  in  all  things  hereafter,  and  it  is  the  law  which 
reveals  itself  in  all  vital  matters  here  and  now.  The 
sin  and  weakness  of  men  may  frustrate  its  working  in 
material  things.  There  may  be  injustice  and  inequality 
in  the  material  rewards  which  men  receive  for  their 
toil,  but  in  spiritual  things  there  is  no  such  interfer- 
ence. In  the  matter  of  character-building  the  law  works 
out  its  results  unerringly.  Thus  step  by  step  we  have 
been  led  back  to  the  thought  with  which  we  set  out, 
viz.,  that  character  equals  service  divided  by  opportu- 
nity. 

This  parable  never  touched  more  closely  upon  hu- 
man life  than  it  does  at  the  present  time.  It  is  a  true  pic- 
ture of  every  life  in  our  land.  This  is  a  time  of  un- 
paralleled opportunity.  Whether  we  appreciate  the  fact 
or  not,  God  is  coming  again  and  again  to  every  one  of 
us  with  his  invitations  to  labor  in  the  vineyard.  He 
is  writing  in  every  one  of  our  lives  the  denominator  of 
opportunity  and  he  is  writing  it  large.  To  us  he  leaves 
the  task  of  putting  over  it  our  numerator  of  service, 
Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  these  privileges  and  bless- 
ings which  our  age  and  circumstances  bring  to  us  will 
only  leave  us  the  worse  unless  we  make  worthy  use  of 
them?  A  rich  inheritance  or  the  endowment  of  un- 
usual talent  is  no  reason  for  idleness  or  ease.  Rather 
should  these  gifts  spur  us  to  more  tireless  endeavor. 
"For  this  very  cause,"  says  the  apostle  Peter,  "adding  on 
your  part  all  diligence."  The  poor  man  may  afford  to 
live  in  idleness,  the  rich  man  never.  The  gift  of  God 
that  is  not  a  spur  to  service  becomes  transformed  into 
a  snare  of  Satan.  The  danger  of  it  is  in  direct  propor- 
tion to  its  greatness. 

The  passing  centuries  have  added  a  hundredfold  to 
the  significance  of  the  householder's  question,  "Why 
stand  ye  here  all  the  day  idle?"  In  this  world,  where 
there  is  so  much  work  to  be  done,  where  there  are  such 
boundless  opportunities  and  possibilities  for  every  life, 

136 


THE     VINEYARD      LABORERS 

where  all  labor  reaps  so  rich  a  reward,  the  crime  of 
crimes  is  idleness.  "Woe  to  them  that  are  at  ease," 
saith  the  Lord.  Yet  even  the  Christian  Church  is  al- 
most hopelessly  at  ease.  Christian  society  abounds  in 
idlers.  Multitudes  of  disciples  are  complacently  gaging 
their  claims  to  the  reward  of  righteousness  by  what 
others  have  done  for  them  rather  than  by  anything  that 
they  have  done  for  others.  They  take  foolish  and  fatal 
pride  in  the  fact  that  the  fraction  of  their  lives  has  a 
large  denominator. 

To-day  the  Lord  is  calling  for  laborers.  In  every  vine- 
yard he  wants  them.  The  harvest  waits.  He  is  calling 
now.  Every  call  means  duty,  but  it  means  more.  It 
means  opportunity,  it  means  privilege;  the  salvation  of 
immortal  souls  is  bound  up  in  every  call.    Then — 

"Up,  and  be  doing!    The  time  is  brief, 
And  life  is  frail  as  an  autumn  leaf. 
The  day  is  bright  and  the  sun  is  high. 
Ere  long  'twill  fade  from  the  glowing  sky ; 
The  harvest  is  white,  and  the  fields  are  wide. 
And  thou  at  thine  ease  may'st  not  abide. 
The  reapers  are  few  and  far  between, 
And  Death  is  abroad  with  his  sickle  keen. 
Go  forth  and  labor!    A  crown  awaits 
The  faithful  servant  at  heaven's  high  gates. 
Work  with  thy  might  ere  the  day  of  grace 
Is  spent,  ere  the  night  steals  on  apace. 
The  Master  has  given  his  pledge  divine, 
'Who  winneth  souls,  like  the  stars  shall  shine'." 


137 


Forgiveness  a  Factor  in 
Character  Building 


CHAPTER  XI 

Forgiveness  a  Factor  in 
Character  Building 

THE    UNFORGIVING    SERVANT 

Matt.  18:21-35 

Text. — *'So  shall  also  my  heavenly  Father  do  unto  you."" — Matt.  18:35 

WHAT  a  picture  of  infinite  vindictiveness 
these  words  present !  Here  is  the  charac- 
ter of  God,  the  heavenly  Father,  painted 
in  all  the  lurid  colorings  of  revenge  and 
fiery  indignation.  The  flames  of  divine 
wrath,  kindled  by  the  ungrateful  conduct  of  man,  break 
forth  to  torment  and  consume  a  soul  that  has  already 
been  forgiven,  but  has  failed  to  manifest  the  fruits 
of  forgiveness.  Such  is  the  first  impression  made 
upon  our  minds  as  we  read  the  closing  words  of  our 
parable.  Too  often  this  is  the  impression  that  remains 
with  us  as  the  lesson  which  our  Lord  intended  to  teach, 
A  more  careful  study  of  the  parable,  however,  dis- 
covers that  it  is  in  reality  a  picture  of  divinest  love,  a 
love  that  is  not  satisfied  with  anything  less  than  the 
complete  blessedness  of  all  God's  children,  a  love  thr.t 
works  inexorably  in  order  that  it  may  work  perfectly 
and  beneficently.  True,  it  is  a  picture  of  the  operation 
of  divine  law  in  human  life ;  but  it  is  not  less  emphatical- 
ly a  picture  of  divine  grace.  Not  loveless  wrath,  even 
at  the  last,  but  loving  severity  that  strives  ever  and  only 
for  the  happiness  of  its  object. 
This  parable  of  The  Unforgiving  Servant  is  spoken     - ..^^/^' 

141 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

by  the  Master  to  enforce  and  illustrate  his  reply  to  a 
question  of  Peter.  "Lord,  how  oft  shall  my  brother  sin 
against  me.  and  I  forgive  him?"  asks  the  ever-ready 
spokesman  of  the  apostles.  Then,  to  show  his  own  gen- 
erosity and  kindliness  of  spirit,  he  adds,  "Until  seven 
times?"  Surely  that  were  a  wondrous  display  of  grace 
that  would  forgive  a  wrong  seven  times  repeated;  and 
I  doubt  not  that  Peter  expected  the  hearty  endorsement 
of  Jesus.  Imagine  his  surprise,  therefore,  when  the  re- 
ply comes  back,  "I  say  not  unto  thee.  Until  seven  times ; 
but,  Until  seventy  times  seven."  That  is  to  say,  "Why, 
1  Peter,  therspirit  of  forgiveness  knows  no  limit  i  it  can 
'   never  be  Exhausted."  ^ 

Imagine  now  the  effect  of  these  words  upon  Peter 
and  his  brother  apostles.     Here  was  a  new  law  ,of  for- 
giveness, simple  enough  so  far  as  its  mere  statement  was 
concerned,  but  utterly  incomprehensible,  from  their  point 
of  view,  in  its  application.     It  seemed  unreasonable,  ar- 
bitrary.    To  their  minds  forgiveness  was  at  once  a  very 
gracious  and  a  very  difficult  act;  and  its  continual  repe- 
tition seemed  to  contradict  plainest  reason.     On  the  one 
hand,  they  felt  that  it  was  more  than  could  justly  be  ex- 
pected of  any  man;  on  the  other,  they  considered  such 
boundless  grace  as  wholly  useless,  if  not  positively  wrong. 
f^They  are  not  a  few  even  in  our  own  day  who  believe  that 
)  forgiveness  must  have  a  limit  if  all  law  and  order  are 
(  not  to  be  stultified. 

^-^  You  see  then  why  Jesus  expands  his  answer  into  a 
parable.  He  wishes  to  put  the  whole  question  of  sin 
and  forgiveness  in  a  new  light,  to  show  the  relative  in- 
significance of  wrongs  suflfered  by  comparison  with 
wrongs  done,  and  to  make  very  clear  the  reflex  influ- 
ence of  the  spirit  of  forgiveness  upon  personal  character. 
For  this  purpose  he  tells  a  simple  story  of  ruin  brought 
about  by  the  spirit  of  unforgiveness. 

The  salient  points  of  the  parable  are  evident  to  the 
most  casual  reader.     Two  contrasts  stand  out  clearly. 

142 


THE      UNFORGIVING      SERVANT 

They  are,  (a)  a  contrast  of  condition,  and  (b)   a  con-    j 
trast  of  action. 

Note  first  the  contrast  of  condition.  Here  are  two 
servants,  both  in  debt;  but  in  the  one  case  the  debt  is 
"ten  thousand  talents"  and  "nothing  wherewith  to  pay"; 
in  the  other  "an  hundred  pence"  and  only  time  required 
to  insure  full  payment. 

Note  also  the  contrast  in  action.  The  king,  in  a  truly 
royal  spirit,  freely  forgave  the  enormous  debt.  The  ser- 
vant, with  the  spirit  of  a  slave,  cast  his  fellow  servant 
into  prison  for  a  mere  trifle. 

The  retribution  that  follows  at  the  hands  of  the  justly 
indignant  king  is  far  more  terrible  than  the  fate  which 
originally  threatened  the  debtor  servant. 

As  we  read  the  story  we  sympathize  heartily  with  the 
wrath  of  the  king  and  we  feel  that  the  punishment  in- 
flicted by  him  was  just.  At  the  same  time  we  are  con- 
scious that  it  embodies  a  certain  harshness  of  spirit  and 
an  arbitrary  use  of  power  which  we  cannot  attribute  to  an 
infinitely  loving  God.  That  the  heavenly  Father  should 
revoke  a  pardon  once  granted,  and  that  he  should  visit 
retributive  torment  upon  one  of  his  children,  is  not  to  be 
thought  of  for  a  moment.  Such  an  act  would  place  him 
in  the  category  of  a  pagan  tyrant,  capricious,  irresponsi- 
ble, unlovable  and  unloving. 

There  is  serious  danger  in  that  method  of  dealing  with  \ 
the  parables  which  seeks  to  establish  exact  parallels  be-  "> 
tween  the  lines  of  the  picture  and  those  of  the  divine  life, 
and  to  find  in  each  figure  of  the  story  the  perfect  repre- 
sentative of  some  personality  involved  in  our  spiritual 
relations.  By  this  method  the  character  of  God  has  often 
been  sadly  distorted  and  misrepresented  to  men.  To 
escape  this  danger  we  must  adopt  a  much  more  elastic 
and  general  method  of  interpretation.  Clearly  we  cannot 
make  the  king  in  the  story  before  us  a  true  representative 
of  God  in  spirit  and  action.  We  must  rather  see  in  his 
conduct  and  spirit  the  embodiment  of  certain  facts  and 

14a 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

laws  that  work  not  capriciously  but  surely  and  invari- 
ably in  carrying  out  God's  great  plan  for  the  redemption 
of  man.    What  are  these  facts  and  laws  ? 

The  chief  difiiculty  with  this  parable  and  others  like  it 
is  that  they  sometimes  lead  us  to  externalize  God  in  our 
thought  and  to  picture  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as  an  or- 
ganization or  institution  outside  ourselves.  We  see  in 
the  picture  a  God  who  sits  enthroned  afar  off  in  the 
heavens,  ruling  man  as  an  earthly  sovereign  rules  his 
subjects;  yes,  even  as  an  absentee  landlord  deals  with  his 
tenants.  And  too  often  we  see  also  a  Church  of  God 
with  its  fellowship  of  disciples  constituting  the  kingdom 
of  heaven. 

Now  let  us  put  away  these  false  notions.  Let  us  think 
of  God  as  a  divine  life  within  our  own  hearts,  and  let  us 
remember  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  the  Christly 
character  within  us.  Studying  our  parable  in  this  light 
we  shall  see  that  it  portrays  certain  conditions  that 
threaten  the  self-destructijQin_.Di.  character^  and  supplies 
the  strongest  possibTe  defense  against  such  spiritual  dis- 
aster. Let  us 'review  the  details  of  the  story  and  see 
how  they  combine  to  produce  the  desired  result. 

In  the  first  place  we  are  told  that  when  the  king  had 
begun  to  reckon  with  his  servants,  "one  was  brought  unto 
him^  that  owed  him  ten  thousand  talents  (perhaps  ten 
million  dollars).  But  forasmuch  as  he  had  not  where- 
with to  pay,  his  lord  commanded  him  to  be  sold,  and  his 
wife,  and  children,  and  all  that  he  had,  and  payment  to 
be  made." 

What  is  this  ?  A  picture  of  conditions  under  the  Jew- 
ish dispensation,  before  the  gospel  came?  No.  Is  it  a 
picture  of  God's  attitude  towards  sinful  men  ?  Not  at  all. 
Rather  is  it  a  picture  of  the  first  effect  of  sin  upon  the 
sinner  under  any  dispensation,  and  also  of  the  relation 
of  sin  to  redemption.  What  is  the  first  obstacle  in  any 
soul  to  the  attainment  of  holiness?  Is  it  not  the  con- 
sciousness of  past  sin,  of  a  debt  which  can  never  be  paid  ? 


i 


/- 


144 


THE      UNFORGIVING      SERVANT 

Jesus  expresses  the  universal  feeling  when  he  says, 
"Every  one  that  committeth  sin  is  the  bondservant  of 
sin."  And  St.  Paul  puts  the  same  idea  in  a  different 
form  in  the  words,  "I  am  carnal,  sold  under  sin."  The 
soul  that  aims  at  high  attainment  is  met  at  the  very  out- 
set of  its  flight  by  a  sense  of  hopelessness  in  view  of 
present  conditions.  There  is  a  heavy  debt  of  sin  which 
"he  hath  not  wherewith  to  pay,"  and  the  sense  of  hope- 
lessness paralyzes  effort. 

Turn  now  to  the  second  scene.  "The  servant  there- 
fore fell  down  and  worshipped  him,  saying.  Lord, 
have  patience  with  me,  and  I  will  pay  thee  all.  And 
the  lord  of  that  servant,  being  moved  with  compas- 
sion, released  him,  and  forgave  him  the  debt." 

In  this  scene  we  have  a  truthful  representation  of  the 
spirit  of  God  and  his  relation  to  men.  He  always  for- 
gives men  their  sins  in  the  moment  of  asking,  yes,  before 
Jhey  ask  for  forgiveness.  The  instant  a  child  of  God, 
desiring  to  attain  to  the  Christlike  character,  becomes 
conscious  of  a  great  debt  of  sin  hampering  him  and 
longs  to  be  rid  of  the  debt,  the  voice  of  divine  grace 
speaks  the  word  of  pardon.  Why  does  the  Bible  abound 
in  assurances  of  God's  readiness  to  forgive  sin?  Is  it 
not  that  the  greatest  obstacle  to  human  redemption  may 
be  removed?  Men  talk  a  great  deal  about  the  difficulty 
of  escaping  from  the  penalty  and  guilt  of  sin.  The  theo- 
logians of  the  ages  have  woven  a  marvelous  fabric 
known  as  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement,  which  is  simply 
a  monumental  witness  to  the  universal  consciousness  of 
sin  and  of  inability  to  pay  the  debt.  But  God  repeatedly 
declares  that  all  past  sin  is  forgiven  even  before  we  ask 
forgiveness.  The  greatest  of  the  Hebrew  preachers 
proclaims  forgiveness,  not  on  the  ground  of  repentance, 
but  as  a  motive  to  repentance.  "I  have  blotted  out,  as  a 
thick  cloud,  thy  transgressions,  and,  as  a  cloud,  thy 
sins;  return  unto  me;  for  I  have  redeemed  thee."    The 

14S 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

sense  of  divine  forgiveness  is  the  source  of  hope,  and 
hope  is  the  necessary  inspiration  to  effort. 

The  first  two  scenes  in  our  parable,  therefore,  set 
forth  the  supreme  obstacle  to  the  building  of  the  Christly 
character,  in  the  sense  of  past  sin,  and  the  divine 
method  of  removing  that  obstacle  by  the  revelation  of 
God's  forgiving  love,  i^^he  sense  of  forgiveness  is  the 
open  door  to  the  heavenly  life  and  character^ 

In  the  third  scene  we  are  confronted  v/tm  a  widely 
different  picture.  "The  same  servant  went  out,  and 
found  one  of  his  fellowservants,  which  owed  him  an 
hundred  pence :  and  he  laid  hands  on  him,  and  took  him 
by  the  throat,  saying,  Pay  me  that  thou  owest.  And  his 
fellowservant  fell  down  at  his  feet,  and  besought  him, 
saying.  Have  patience  with  me,  and  I  will  pay  thee  all. 
And  he  would  not:  but  went  and  cast  him  into  prison, 
till  he  should  pay  the  debt." 

Think  of  it !  The  man  who  had  just  been  forgiven  a 
debt  of  ten  millions  imprisons  his  fellow  for  a  debt  of 
fifteen  dollars.  He  is  not  moved  to  pity  even  when  his 
fellow  servant  pleads  with  him  in  precisely  the  words 
he  himself  had  used  to  his  lord.  And  in  the  case  of  this 
second  the  words  were  more  significant  than  in  his  own ; 
for  despite  his  promise  he  could  not  have  paid  his  own 
debt.  But  the  fellow  servant  might  easily  have  paid  the 
smaller  debt  in  a  short  time. 

Still,  that  is  merely  incidental.  The  abiding  impres- 
sion made  upon  us  by  this  scene  grows  out  of  the  con- 
trasted debts.  Ten  thousand  talents — an  hundred  pence. 
The  ratio  is  more  than  six  hundred  thousand  to  one. 
What  is  the  thought?  That  our  offenses  against  God 
are  literally  so  much  greater  or  more  manifold  than  the 
offenses  of  others  against  us?  Perhaps  not.  That  mat- 
ters little.  The  fact  of  vital  significance  is  that  in  their 
effect  upon  the  development  of  character,  in  their  rela- 
tion to  our  personal  redemption,  our  offendings  against 
others — i.  e.,  God  and  our  fellow  men — whether  few  or 

140 


THE      UNFORGIVING      SERVANT 

many,  exert  a  vastly  more  potent  influence  for  evil  than 
do  the  offendings  of  others  against  us. 

"Why  beholdest  thou  the  mote  that  is  in  thy  brother's 
eye,  but  considerest  not  the  beam  that  is  in  thine  own 
eye?"  says  our  Lord  in  another  place.  What?  My  sins  a 
beam,  and  my  brother's  only  a  mote?  Not  in  an  abso- 
lute sense,  but  when  viewed  in  their  relation  to  my  own 
life  and  spiritual  growth.  My  smallest  sin  will  hinder  my 
sanctification  far  more  than  the  greatest  sin  of  my  neigh- 
bor. A  mere  breath  of  impurity  in  my  own  soul  will 
drive  me  farther  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven  than  a 
tempest  of  vileness  from  my  brother  can  do. 

We  reverse  the  glass  and  see  things  with  a  false 
perspective.  To  us  the  offenses  of  others  against  us 
seem  immeasurably  greater  than  our  offenses  against 
them  or  against  God.  We  magnify  wrongs  and  slights 
and  injuries  received  till  they  seem  unpardonable.  But 
our  own  failings  and  shortcomings  and  transgressions 
we  view  with  a  lenient  eye.  We  would  be  better  for  a 
few  lessons  in  divine  bookkeeping.  We  need  to  study 
the  contrasts  as  drawn  by  our  Lord — ^ten  thousand  tal- 
ents over  against  an  hundred  pence,  a  beam  in  contrast 
with  a  mote.  These  are  not  exaggerations.  They  repre- 
sent literal  truth. 

Let  us  give  full  weight  to  this  element  of  the  parable. 
Let  its  light  shine  out  clear  and  bright,  for  only  so 
shall  we  appreciate  the  infinite  marvel  of  divine  forgive- 
ness as  it  stands  out  in  contrast  against  our  grudging 
and  unforgiveness.  Only  so  shall  we  be  able  to  under- 
stand the  immeasurably  greater  influence  of  our  own 
sins  upon  our  character  than  that  of  the  sins  of  others. 
Seen  through  the  gospel  object-glass  our  sins  loom  up 
like  mountains,  while  the  wrongs  done  us  by  others 
dwindle  slowly  away  to  nothingness. 

Now  take  the  last  scene  in  the  parable.  His  fellow 
servants,  indignant  at  the  conduct  of  this  man,  report  it 
in  detail  to  their  lord;  and  he,  after  sternly  denouncing 

147 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

the  ungenerous  conduct  of  him  whom  he  had  so  freely 

forgiven,  "deUvered  him  to  the  tormentors,  till  he 
should  pay  all  that  was  due."  And  Jesus  appends  the 
words  of  our  text  to  the  effect  that  this  represents  God's 
method  of  dealing  with  men.  How  does  it  represent 
God?  Certainly  not  in  a  direct  and  immediate  sense. 
We  cannot  think  of  God  as  revoking  a  pardon  once 
granted.  That  were  capricious  and  tyrannical,  however 
great  the  provocation.  We  instinctively  recoil  from  such 
an  interpretation.    What,  then,  is  the  meaning? 

We  may  seek  it  along  the  line  already  suggested.    As 
a  sense  of  forgiveness  is  necessary  to  inspire  hope  and 
courage  in  the  struggle  for  character,  so  the  spirit  of 
i    forgiveness  is  necessary  to  the  attainment  and  continued 
/    possession  of  character.     The  burden  of  unforgiven  sin 
may  hold  a  soul  in  hopeless  bondage  and  so  paralyze  all 
endeavor  towards  noble  effort;  but  an  unforgiving  spirit 
will  drag  the  soul  from  the  loftiest  height  and  keep  it 
in  perpetual  torment  which  is  a  foretaste  of  hell.     Con- 
ceive, if  you  can,  any  more  terrible  punishment  to  be  in- 
1    flicted  upon  a  human  soul  either  here  or  hereafter  than 
I    the  continual  cherishing  of  grudges  against  those  who 
have  done  it  wrong.     Such  a  spirit  not  only  blights  all 
hope  of  moral  and  spiritual  progress,  but  it  gnaws  at  the 
soul  as  a  canker  or  burns  as  a  flame.     That  the  heart 
should    be    perpetually    lacerated    with   its   own   petty 
grudges  or  stung  with  the  venom  of  its  own  enmities, 
that  is  the  supreme  penalty  of  wrong-doing. 

And  this  is,  if  I  mistake  not,  the  precise  meaning  of 
our  Lord's  application  of  his  parable.  Who  would  at- 
tain to  the  Christly  character  must  be  forgiving  as  well 
as  forgiven.  He  must  be  forgiving  if  he  would  not 
frustrate  all  the  purpose  of  being  forgiven,  yes,  if  he 
,  would  not  utterly  efface  from  his  own  heart  the  very 
sense  of  divine  forgiveness.  %  Do  not  externalize  God. 
Do  not  think  of  him  as  a  being  remote  from  self,  who 
forgives    or    withholds    forgiveness    "according    to    his 

/    148 


THE      UNFORGIVING      SERVANT 

good  pleasure."  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  not  a  city 
with  walls  and  gates  to  be  opened  or  closed  by  the  fiat 
of  One  who  is  wholly  apart  from  yourself.  No, 
heaven  is  within  and  God  is  within.^  As  Milton  has  it» 

"The  mind  is  its  own  place,  and  in  itself 
Can  make  a  heaven  of  hell,  a  hell  of  heaven." 

Imagine  yourself  in  the  redeemed  city  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse, with  all  its  glory  of  pearly  gates  and  golden 
streets.  As  you  walk  amid  its  glories,  you  suddenly 
meet  some  one  who  had  offended  you  and  whom  you 
had  not  forgiven.  What  would  happen?  Why,  the 
rising  of  that  old  grudge  would  destroy  all  your  bliss  in 
a  moment.  It  would  work  a  transformation  more  com- 
plete and  startling  than  the  fabled  destruction  of  Kling- 
sor's  palace  when  Parsifal  makes  the  sign  of  the  cross 
with  the  sacred  spear. 

The  lesson  of  the  parable,  then,  is  a  simple  one,  and 
vital  to  our  spiritual  growth.  Salvation  is  the  rescue 
of  character.  It  is  not  a  scheme  for  getting  into  heaven. 
It  is  rather  the  process  of  getting  heaven  into  the  soul 
through  the  conquest  of  self  and  sin.  The  first  condition 
of  such  conquest  is  the  realization  of  forgiveness.  But 
there  can  be  no  abiding  sense  of  forgiveness  in  a  soul 
that  is  itself  unforgiving.  We  can  only  know  such  at- 
tributes and  qualities  of  God  as  find  a  response  in  our 
own  hearts,  and  we  come  to  know  him  more  perfectly 
as  we  ourselves  grow  into  his  likeness.  The  cherishing 
of  a  grudge,  the  harboring  of  a  vindictive  spirit,  will  ut- 
terly obscure  all  sense  of  divine  forgiveness  and  hold 
the  soul  in  perpetual  torment. 

"How  oft  shall  my  brother  sin  against  me,  and  I  for- 
give him?"  Ah,  Peter,  do  not  be  so  anxious  to  discover 
the  limitation  of  forgiveness  and  duty!  What  were 
your  hope  if  God  set  a  limit  to  his  forgiveness?  "Till 
seven  times?"    Ah,  grudging  soul,  cease  your  careful 

149 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

counting!  Do  not  hasten  to  be  done  with  forgiving. 
Welcome  each  new  opportunity  to  forgive  your  brother, 
and  cry,  "Thus,  and  thus,  and  thus,  do  I  hope  that  God 
may  forgive  me !"  And  with  its  continual  exercise  the 
practise  of  forgiveness  shall  grow  easier,  the  spirit  of 
forgiveness  more  natural  and  strong;  and  in  the  ever 
clearer  shining  of  God's  love  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
shall  be  built  up  in  your  soul  till  all  the  life  is  filled  with 
its  beauty,  its  glory  and  its  joy. 


150 


Character  and  Salvation 
Inseparable 


CHAPTER  XII 

Character  and  Salvation 
Inseparable 

THE   MARRIAGE   FEAST 

Matt.  22:2-14 

Teirt.— "J^*  ivas  speechless."— "MzW.  22:12 

A  FEAST,  a  marriage  feast,  a  royal  mar- 
riage FEAST.  To  the  Oriental  mind  this 
represents  the  acme  of  physical  pleasure. 
It  is  the  crowning  symbol  of  earthly  joy. 
Hence  Jesus  selects  this  as  the  most  at- 
tractive and  at  the  same  time  the  most  fitting  type  of  the 
heavenly  life.  "The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  likened  unto 
a  certain  king^  who  made  a  marriage  feast  for  his  son." 
A  brief  glance  at  the  connection  helps  us  to  interpret 
the  parable  intelligently.  This  is  the  concluding  picture 
of  a  series,  the  final  home  thrust  of  a  threefold  lesson. 
Let  us  review  afresh  the  steps  which  lead  to  it. 

Self-appointed  censors  in  the  persons  of  certain  chief 
priests  and  elders  have  challenged  our  Lord's  authority. 
A  straightforward  counter-challenge  they  have  refused 
to  answer.  The  simplest  test  of  their  claims  to  religious 
leadership  has  put  them  to  silence.  Before  a  natural 
and  honest  question  they  are  speechless. 

Then  follows  a  parable — the  parable  of  The  Two 
Sons — which  betrays  them  into  self-conviction.  A  sec- 
ond— the  parable  of  The  Husbandmen  and  the  Vineyard 
— drives  them  to  self-sentence.  And  now,,  when  they 
clearly  understand  the  drift  of  his  words,  Jesus  pro- 

153 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

ceeds  to  sketch  a  picture  of  his  opponents  in  speechless 
confusion  and  to  expose  to  their  quickened  sensibiUties 
their  true  relation  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

Note  the  train  of  thought  in  our  parable.  In  its  first 
stage  it  is  simply  a  repetition  of  the  corresponding  part 
of  the  preceding  parable  under  a  changed  figure.  It 
portrays  the  treatment  which  God's  messengers  re- 
ceived at  the  hands  of  men  in  former  ages.  But,  interpo- 
lating a  few  words  as  to  their  punishment,  the  emphasis 
is  thrown  upon  the  result  of  their  conduct  rather  than 
upon  the  conduct  itself.  Advancing  from  this  point, 
the  thought  takes  a  wholly  new  turn.  Up  to  this  time 
Jesus  has  identified  his  hearers  with  the  fathers  along 
the  line  of  open  rebellion.  Now,  allowing  a  possible 
difference  in  the  outward  manifestation  of  their  spirit, 
he  shows  that  the  same  fate  threatens  as  a  result  of 
self-righteousness  and  hypocrisy. 

After  declaring  the  punishment  of  those  who  had  re- 
jected the  original  invitation,  a  second  invitation  is  is; 
sued  as  free  and  as  urgent  as  the  first;  and  it  is  fai* 
broader  in  its  scope.  Still,  that  invitation  implies  a  de- 
cent politeness  in  donning  the  provided  garments  upon 
entering  the  banquet-hall,  just  as~ffti1y''as"'arrea3iness  to 
partake  of  the  feast.  One,  however,  appears  without  a 
wedding  garment.  True,  we  are  not  told  that  garments 
were  furnished  to  all  who  came;  but  the  utter  speech- 
lessness of  the  man  when  challenged  is  in  itself  a  confes- 
sion that  his  condition  was  not  the  result  of  any  failure 
in  the  provision  of  the  host,  but  of  culpable  neglect  or 
perhaps  of  designed  insult  on  his  own  part. 

Twice  Jesus  has  made  the  personal  application  for 
his  hearers.  No  need  to  make  it  in  this  case.  The  orig- 
inal of  the  portrait  is  clearly  before  him.  By  this  time 
the  chief  priests  and  elders  know  that  he  is  speaking  of 
them,  and  they  have  only  to  fill  out  the  sketch  line  by  line 
to  see  in  it  their  own  portrait.  Their  fathers  had  re- 
jected the  divine  invitation;  but  they  flatter  themselves 

154 


THE        MARRIAGE        FEAST 

that  they  have  accepted  it.  Yes,  they  fancy  that  even  now 
they  are  in  the  kingdom,  that  they  have  already  en- 
tered the  royal  banquet-hall  and  are  sitting  at  the  festal- 
table. 

But  a  question  has  been  put  to  them.  It  is  the  ques- 
tion of  a  few  moments  ago.  And  what  was  that?  A 
question  about  John?  No.  It  was  really  a  question 
about  themselves,  a  challenge  of  their  pretensions.  The 
question  about  John  they  could  have  answered  if  they, 
would.  It  was  simple  and  direct.  The  real  question, 
and  the  one  that  gave  them  difficulty,  was  this:  "How 
do  you  venture  to  defy  my  authority,  when  you  dare  not 
honestly  assert  your  own?  How  do  you  claim  a  placq 
in  my  Father's  kingdom,  when  you  do  not  manifest  the 
spirit  and  character  which  alone  befit  the  kingdom?  How 
came  you  at  the  heavenly  feast  not  having  on  the  wed- 
ding garment  of  a  sincere  and  heavenly  character?" 
And  the  self-evident  inexcusableness  of  their  position 
made  them  speechless. 

The  conclusion  is  only  too  plain  and  unavoidable. 
By  open  rebellion  and  disobedience  your  fathers  re- 
fused to  enter  into  the  blessings  of  God's  kingdom.  And 
you,  although  you  have  not  joined  in  their  overt  re- 
jection of  the  joys  of  that  kingdom,  are  yet  in  a  like 
position  with  them;  for  you  have  neglected  the  condi- 
tions by  which  those  joys  are  obtained,  viz.,  holiness  of 
life  and  sincerity  of  heart ;  hence  that  which  they  scorn- 
fully rejected  you  will  lose  through  neglect  and  hypoc- 
risy. It  is  not  enough  formally  to  assent  to  the  divine 
call.  It  is  not  enough  to  be  found  among  those  who 
render  a  conventional  obedience  to  God's  commands 
and  call  themselves  his  children.  There  must  be  personal 
righteousness,  personal  sincerity,  personal  prepara- 
tion of  character  and  life.  Wanting  this,  you  will  be 
self-banished  into  outer  darkness,  where  there  is  neither 
joy  nor  blessing,  but  where  all  is  misery  and  sorrow. 

Now,   putting    ourselves    in   the    place    of   the    chief 

155 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

priests  and  elders,  let  us  listen  to  this  story  once  more 
and  ask  what  it  means  for  us. 

The  finger-point  is  on  the  man  without  a  wedding 
garment.  He  stands  out  most  clearly  as  the  central 
figure  of  this  story.  Other  details  link  the  present  para- 
ble more  or  less  closely  with  its  fellows,  but  the  clos- 
ing incident  is  unique  and  impressive.  In  it  we  shall 
find  the  essence  of  its  truth,  the  focus  of  its  light. 
And  this  is  the  truth  which  it  illustrates:  Christly 
character  is  essential  to  heavenly  joy. 

In  other  words,  salvation  and  character  are  insepara- 
ble. In  certain  quarters  we  often  hear  the  phrase, 
"Salvation  by  character."  It  is  a  suggestive  phrase, 
but  inadequate.  We  should  rather  talk  of  "salvation 
to  character";  for  character  itself  is  salvation.  It  is 
not  the  means  or  power  by  which  salvation  is  secured; 
it  is,  rather,  the  end  of  salvation,  or  at  least  a  part  of  that 
end.  To  enter  heaven,  to  mingle  with  the  society  of 
the  redeemed,  to  view  the  joys  prepared  for  those 
who  love  God,  all  this  affords  no  real  satisfaction  to  the 
soul  that  is  itself  unholy,  but  only  plunges  it  into  deeper 
misery  and  darkness.  If  heaven  be  a  place,  then  it  is 
such  a  place  as  only  the  heavenly-minded  can  enjoy. 
All  others  are  repelled  by  the  inherent  antagonism  of 
their  unheavenly  natures.  It  is  certainly  true,  at  least 
in  part,  that — 

"The  mind  is  its  own  place,  and  in  itself 
Can  make  a  heaven  of  hell,  a  hell  of  heaven," 

although  Milton,  by  putting  those  words  in  the  mouth 
of  Satan,  doubtless  intended  to  brand  them  as  false. 
Nor  less  true  are  those  other  words  attributed  to  the 
same  speaker,  "Myself  am  hell."  They  express  in  con- 
cisest  form  the  very  kernel  of  our  parable.  See  how 
all  the  incidents  group  themselves  about  this  focal 
thought. 

156 


THE         MARRIAGE         FEAST 

This  is  a  parable  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  i.  e.,  a 
parable  of  the  Christly  character.  The  gladness  of  the 
scene  is  the  necessary  manifestation  of  such  character. 
It  is  Christly  character  that  is  likened  to  a  royal  mar- 
riage feast.  It  is  want  of  the  Christly  character  that 
deprives  every  soul  of  the  heavenly  joy. 

The  picture  is  not  in  any  sense  twofold.  Through- 
out it  illustrates  a  single  thought.  This  want  of  char- 
acter that  shuts  the  soul  out  of  the  heavenly  joy  may 
betray  itself  in  different  ways.  Three  forms  of  its 
manifestation  are  depicted — levity,  rebellion  and  neg- 
lect. 

First  we  have  a  picture  of  levity.  Of  the  guests 
originally  invited  it  is  said  that  some  "made  light"  of 
the  invitation.  The  attractions  of  the  heavenly  life 
were  treated  by  them  as  matters  of  ridicule.  There  is 
no  more  dangerous  attitude  of  mind  than  that  which 
makes  light  of  truth  and  righteousness.  The  Psalmist 
classes  the  "scomer"  with  the  ungodly  and  sinners.  His 
classification  is  a  wise  one.  If  the  scorner  be  not  already 
wicked,  he  is  in  a  fair  way  to  become  so.  Worse  than 
that,  he  is  sure  to  drag  others  down  with  him.  The 
atmosphere  of  scorn  is  destructive  not  alone  to  the 
spiritual  life,  but  to  the  most  ordinary  moral  life  as 
well. 

The  moral  fiber  of  every  age  has  been  built  up  by 
men  and  nations  that  have  taken  life  seriously.  Some- 
times they  have  gone  to  the  extreme  of  solemnity,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Puritans  and  early  Quakers;  but 
everybody  knows  that  the  gloomy  Roundhead  left  a 
better  legacy  to  Great  Britain  than  did  the  flippant  Cava- 
lier. America  owes  a  debt  that  can  never  be  estimated 
to  the  stern  and  uncompromising  but  never  irreverent 
settlers  of  New  England. 

On  the  other  hand,  many  a  community  has  been 
laughed  into  confusion  and  many  a  nation  sneered  into 
anarchy  by  the  mockery  of  a  Voltaire.     Every  thought- 

157 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

ful  observer  may  see  this  process  going  on  daily  in  the 
world — the  spirit  of  levity  or  ridicule  undermining 
character,  and  character  thus  debased  becoming  incapa- 
ble of  heavenly  fellowship  or  heavenly  joy.  Every 
earnest  soul  must  learn  this  lesson,  viz.,  that  there  are 
but  two  steps  from  levity  to  perdition. 

Rebellion  is  the  second  form  in  which  fatal  want  of 
character  reveals  itself.  "The  rest  took  his  serv- 
ants, and  treated  them  shamefully,  and  killed  them," 
says  the  parable.  It  requires  no  argument  or  even 
illustration  to  convince  our  minds  that  open  and  aggres- 
sive wickedness  is  a  sufficient  ground  for  exclusion  from 
the  heavenly  kingdom  and  its  blessings.  But  we  do  not 
always  realize  as  fully  as  we  ought  the  fact  that  sin  is 
not  only  the  reason  of  exclusion,  but  the  very  force 
which  excludes  the  soul  from  heavenly  joy.  We  are 
wont  to  think  of  the  power  that  excludes  as  external 
to  ourselves.  In  a  word,  we  imagine  that  it  is  God  who 
excludes,  and  that  he  may  if  he  choose  graciously  admit 
even  sinful  souls  to  heaven  at  the  last. 

Do  not  overlook  the  fact  that  the  rebellious  ones  wero 
not  thrust  out  from  the  feast  by  the  king,  but  them- 
selves refused  to  come  to  the  feast.  As  holiness  is  an 
attractive  force,  so  sin  is  a  repulsive  force  that  of  itself 
excludes  the  sinner  from  the  heavenly  kingdom.  I  say 
it  reverently  but  earnestly,  not  even  God  himself  can 
save  a  soul  in  sin.  Only  as  a  soul  is  saved  from  sin 
can  that  soul  be  brought  into  a  participation  in  the  bliss 
of  the  redeemed.  Rebellion  against  God  is  perdition. 
Sin  is  hell.  So  long  as  we  retain  unholiness  of  char- 
acter, we  are  rejecting  the  divine  invitation  and  making 
it  impossible  for  God  to  save  us. 

A  third  form  in  which  want  of  the  Christly  character 
may  betray  itself  is  neglect  Among  those  who  re- 
sponded to  the  second  urgent  invitation,  the  king  found 
one  "who  had  not  on  a  wedding-garment."  The 
others  have  held  themselves  wholly  aloof.     They  have 

158 


THE        MARRIAGE         FEAST 

spurned  the  invitation  and  avoided  the  assembled  com- 
pany, betaking  themselves  to  places  and  occupations  far 
removed  from  the  scene  of  pleasure.  But  this  man  has 
come  in  with  the  crowd.  He  mingles  freely  with  them. 
He  seats  himself  at  the  banqueting-table.  But  further 
than  this  he  cannot  go.  His  want  of  character  dis- 
covers itself  and  he  is  cast  out.  What  though  he  has 
entered  the  hall?  What  though  he  has  accounted  him- 
self one  of  the  company?  He  is  out  of  place.  His 
nature  is  not  in  harmony  with  the  occasion.  Hence  he 
cannot  become  in  any  real  sense  a  sharer  in  the  gladness 
of  the  hour. 

At  no  point  does  the  parable  touch  more  closely  upon 
present  life  and  present  danger  than  at  this.  On  the 
one  hand  Christian  ideals  and  customs  or  methods  of 
life  have  become  so  generally  prevalent  in  a  land  like 
ours  that  they  are  adopted  by  all  with  little  thought. 
We  go  with  the  multitude  to  the  house  of  God.  We 
join  with  the  saints  in  all  the  outward  forms  of  worship. 
We  follow  their  lead  in  a  good  many  things,  mingling 
in  their  organizations,  patronizing  their  reforms  and 
improvements,  taking  part  in  their  charities  and  benevo-. 
lences,  falling  in  with  the  conventional  manners  and  cus- 
toms of  their  daily  life;  and  we  easily  persuade  our- 
selves that  we  are  as  veritable  saints  as  any  of  them. 
Do  we  not  enter  into  the  banquet-hall  in  their  company  ? 
Are  we  not  seated  in  their  midst  at  the  festal  board? 
Are  we  not  to  all  intents  and  purposes  of  their  com- 
pany? Does  not  the  popular  judgment  reckon  us  among 
them? 

Furthermore,  we  are  wont  to  talk  of  salvation  as 
though  it  consisted  simply  in  gaining  admittance  to  a 
place  with  pearly  gates  and  shining  streets  called 
"Heaven" ;  or  as  though  it  were  a  mere  matter  of  secur- 
ing a  favorable  judgment  from  God.  In  short,  we  look 
upon  it  as  wholly  a  question  of  fate  and  external 
circumstance. 

159 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

Jesus  reiterates  the  thought  that  salvation  is  insepa- 
rably linked  with  character;  more — that  salvation  is 
primarily  the  rescue  of  character.  Until  this  rescue  is 
accomplished,  salvation  can  have  no  real  meaning.  The 
sinner  may  enter  the  company  of  the  saints,  but  he 
cannot  know  the  joy  of  the  saints.  His  sinful  nature 
makes  that  impossible.  What  advantage,  then,  to  enter 
the  city  of  gold,  if  we  are  out  of  harmony  with  its  life? 
He  who  does  not  enjoy  the  society  of  the  saints  and  their 
life  here  on  earth,  how  can  he  be  otherwise  than  su- 
premely miserable  in  the  perfect  righteousness  of  that 
heavenly  abode  and  in  the  immediate  presence  of  God? 

In  the  story,,  the  king  is  represented  as  commanding 
the  expulsion  of  the  impudent  guest.  The  parallelism 
is  not  complete  at  this  point;  for  the  nature  of  the  case 
does  not  admit  of  it.  The  result,  however,  is  set  forth 
with  absolute  exactness.  The  destiny  of  man  is  not 
determined  by  divine  Omnipotence  exerted  in  complete 
independence  of  his  own  will  and  action.  The  power 
of  God  is  always  and  invariably  manifested  in  working 
out  the  results  of  sin  according  to  fixed  and  clearly 
revealed  laws.  The  force  that  drives  the  soul  from  the 
joys  of  heaven  is  the  expulsive  force  of  sin.  The  outer 
darkness  is  sin-created.  The  weeping  and  the  gnashing 
of  teeth  are  the  necessary  accompaniments  of  a  sinful 
life. 

All  these  facts  may  be  observed  daily  in  our  common 
life.  The  self-banishment  of  men  from  the  joy  and 
blessing  of  the  heavenly  life  is  an  every-day  occurrence. 
In  our  own  personal  experience  we  have  known  it.  We 
have  sought  the  company  of  the  good  and  the  true  in 
the  vain  hope  that  the  gladness  of  their  goodness  might 
be  ours.  But,  neglecting  to  array  ourselves  in  their 
purity  and  holiness  of  character,  we  have  found  our- 
selves unable  to  share  in  their  real  joy,  or  even  to  com- 
prehend it;  and  soon  the  repellent  force  of  our  unsanc- 
tified  life  has  hurled  us  forth  into  our  native  darkness 

160 


THE      MARRIAGE      FEAST 

and  misery.    He  who  would  know  the  bUss  of  the  saints 
must  himself  be  a  saint. 

Equally  common  and  easy  to  be  observed  is  the  fact 
that  those  who  really  enter  into  the  true  life  are 
few  by  comparison  with  those  to  whom  the  opportunity 
is  presented.  ''Many  are  called,  but  few  are  chosen," 
says  the  voice  of  continuous  experience.  The  invita- 
tions of  grace  are  from  God,  and  are  as  boundless  as 
his  everlasting  love.  The  election  to  joy  or  woe  is 
of  man,  and  it  is  limited  by  the  narrow  horizon  of 
human  desire.  To  put  it  in  a  sentence,  the  inclusive 
invitation  is  God's;  the  exclusive  election  is  man's. 

What  provision  had  been  made  for  the  man  of  the 
parable  we  do  not  certainly  know.  We  can  easily  infer 
that  a  wedding-garment  was  to  be  had  for  the  taking. 
But  this  we  do  know:  ample  provision  is  made  for 
every  one  who  desires  to  attain  to  holiness  of  life.  The 
heavenly  king  not  only  invites  us  to  the  marriage-feast 
of  joy,  but  he  offers  us  all  that  is  necessary  to  enable 
us  to  enter  into  its  perfect  enjoyment;  he  offers  us  the 
power  to  overcome  sin  and  to  develop  such  a  character 
as  shall  fit  us  for  the  unhindered  participation  in  the 
bliss  of  heaven.  Not  for  a  few,  but  for  all,  is  the 
Christly  character  and  the  heavenly  joy  possible.  That 
is  the  very  essence  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  "As 
many  as  received  him,  to  them  gave  he  the  right  to 
become  children  of  God."  The  robe  awaits  every  one 
of  us — not  the  robe  of  a  fictitious  and  imputed  right- 
eousness, but  the  robe  of  a  true  and  recognized  right- 
eousness. The  invitation  is  first  an  invitation  to  don 
the  robe  and  then  to  partake  of  the  feast.  Jesus  Christ 
was  a  "holiness  man"  in  the  true  sense  of  that  term. 
Through  him  the  power  of  holiness  is  oflfered,  and  with 
holiness  salvation.  Not  salvation  without  holiness,  for 
holiness  is  salvation,  while  unholiness  is  perdition. 

The  picture  fades  from  the  screen.     The  story  dies 

161 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

away  into  silence.  But  the  words  linger  in  the  mind — 
''He  was  speechless  T 

Ah,  we  may  be  bold  enough  in  challenging  some  arbi- 
trary notion  of  divine  authority.  With  ready  impu- 
dence we  may  question  the  methods  of  the  divine  gov- 
ernment in  relation  to  many  things.  We  may  dispute 
the  teachings  of  Jesus  and  cast  doubt  upon  his  work,  his 
nature,  his  life;  but  when  the  clear  light  of  divinest 
truth  is  turned  upon  our  own  hearts  and  all  other  ques- 
tions are  put  out  of  sight  and  out  of  mind,  we  shall  be 
speechless.  Hypocrisy  has  no  voice  with  which  to 
answer  truth.  Sin,  when  brought  face  to  face  with 
holiness,  is  dumb. 

The  sharpest  pang  in  the  sorrow  of  the  lost  is  the 
consciousness  that  his  misery  is  self-inflicted.  The 
saved  have  not  withheld  from  him  a  share  of  their  bliss. 
God  has  not  debarred  him  from  its  enjoyment.  From 
saved  and  Saviour  together  have  gone  forth  numberless 
and  urgent  invitations.  But  his  own  levity,  rebellion, 
or  neglect  has  shut  him  from  the  heavenly  feast.  "The 
Lord's  hand  is  not  shortened  .  .  .  neither  his  ear 
heavy  .  .  .  but  your  iniquities  have  separated  between 
you  and  your  God,  and  your  sins  have  hid  his  face 
from  you,"  is  the  word  of  the  old  prophet;  and  in  the 
light  of  the  Judgment  Day  the  speechless  tongues  of 
the  lost  will  bear  tacit  witness  to  the  truth  of  his  words. 

To-day  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  open  to  all.  To-day 
the  invitation  comes  to  you  and  to  me  from  the  King  of 
kings.  It  calls  to  a  glad  festival.  It  offers  the  wed- 
ding-garment. Not  an  imputed  but  an  imparted  right- 
eousness is  the  message  of  the  gospel.  It  is  your 
privilege  to  be  made  free  from  sin  and  to  enter  upon  a 
life  of  Christlike  holiness.  Accepting  the  invitation, 
putting  on  the  spotless  robe,  no  power  in  the  universe 
will  or  can  hinder  you  from  sharing  the  heavenly  feast. 


162 


The  Test  of 
Character 


CHAPTER  XIII 

The  Test  of 
Character 

THE   TEN    VIRGINS 

Matt.  25:1-13 

Text.— "r^^  ivhe  took  oil.  "—Mitt.  25:4 

"There  is  a  tide  in  the  affairs  of  men, 
Which,  taken  at  the  flood,  leads  on  to  fortune ; 
Omitted,  all  the  voyage  of  their  life 
Is  bound  in  shallows  and  in  miseries." 

THUS  speaks  Brutus  in  Shakespeare's  "Julius 
Caesar";  and  the  words,  confirmed  by  uni- 
versal experience,  have  been  graven  on  the 
page  of  eternal  truth.  Of  similar  import  are 
the  words  of  Voltaire,  "I  have  noticed  that 
destiny  in  every  case  depends  upon  the  act  of  a 
moment." 

In  every  life  there  are  certain  crises.  The  most  com- 
monplace and  uneventful  career  is  not  without  its  emer- 
gencies. To  the  most  far-sighted  some  events  will  come 
unexpectedly.  And  it  is  the  unforeseen,  the  critical,  that 
tests  the  life. 

The  most  ordinary  sailor  can  manage  a  vessel  well 
enough  when  the  sea  is  smooth  and  the  wind  favorable. 
It  is  the  storm  with  its  contrary  winds  and  boisterous 
waves  that  proves  the  really  skilful  mariner  or  fills  the 
unskilled  with  despair.  So  the  quiet  of  our  human  life 
shows  little  difference  between  the  weak  and  the  strong, 

165 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

the  real  and  the  unreal;  but  crises  are  the  great  re- 
vealers.  The  unexpected  event,  the  emergency,  is  the 
betrayer  of  sham  or  the  witness  of  true  strength. 

Jesus  has  been  speaking  of  the  ''Second  Advent."  Of 
all  that  is  involved  in  that  doctrine  the  world  is  still 
ignorant  for  the  most  part.  I  am  not  sure  that  our 
Lord  ever  intended  it  should  have  the  prominence  that 
it  has  gained  in  certain  quarters  in  the  present  age. 
Certainly  I  shall  not  attempt  to  explain  either  the  mode 
or  the  consequences  of  that  event  or  its  relation  to  other 
great  events,  such  as  the  dawn  of  the  millennium.  But 
one  thing  seems  perfectly  clear.  The  time  of  his  return 
was  unknown  even  to  Jesus  himself,  and  whenever  it 
occurs,  it  will  be  wholly  unexpected.  In  fact,  this  is  the 
use  that  our  Lord  makes  of  the  doctrine.  His  "Second 
Advent,"  as  we  call  it,  is  represented  by  him  as  the 
typical  crisis  or  emergency  in  human  life. 

They  are  not  wholly  wrong  who  speak  of  death  and 
the  coming  of  Christ  as  synonymous.  As  events  they 
are  wholly  distinct  and  almost  antipodal  in  character. 
But  as  crises  they  are  closely  related.  If  the  advent  of 
the  Christ  be  the  supreme  crisis  for  all^  yet,  for  those 
who  pass  away  before  that  event  takes  place,  death  is 
the  greatest  earthly  emergency.  Hence  the  two  ideas 
are  in  this  sense  interchangeable. 

In  the  preceding  chapter  Jesus  has  expressed  very 
clearly  and  at  considerable  length  this  thought  of  the 
Second  Advent  as  the  supreme  emergency;  and  in  the 
light  of  that  chapter  we  must  interpret  the  parable  of 
the  Wise  and  Foolish  Virgins. 

The  story  analyzed  resolves  itself  into  three  distinct 
scenes.  First,  we  see  ten  young  and  beautiful  maidens 
clad  in  festal  attire  and  with  blazing  torch-lamps  going 
forth  to  a  place  of  rendezvous  to  await  the  coming  of  a 
bridal  party,,  that  they  may  escort  the  happy  pair  to  the 
wedding-feast.  There  they  dispose  themselves  to  rest 
till  the  bridegroom  shall  appear. 

166 


THE       TEN       VIRGINS 

The  second  scene  opens  with  the  announcement  of  the 
bridegroom's  approach.  Quickly  the  maidens  awake  and 
prepare  their  torches  for  the  march.  Five  pour  fresh 
oil  into  their  lamps  and  are  instantly  ready  to  go  forth. 
The  other  five  try  in  vain  to  rehght  their  dry  and  charred 
wicks,  and  then  appeal  to  their  friends  for  more  oil,  but 
are  refused  and  rush  out  into  the  darkness  in  quest  of 
a  fresh  supply,  while  the  procession  moves  on  to  the 
banquet-hall. 

Finally,  we  behold  the  foolish  five  in  the  dim  shad- 
ows outside  the  door  of  the  bridal  mansion,  knocking 
and  piteously  pleading  for  admittance,  which  is  denied 
them. 

The  connection  would  indicate  a  parable  of  the  Sec- 
ond Advent.  In  other  words,  it  is  a  picture  of  life's 
crisis  or  emergency.  What  is  the  figure  employed? 
Some  dire  calamity?  Some  dreaded  evil?  No.  It  is  a 
marriage-feast,  an  event  of  the  most  joyful  character. 

The  great  emergencies  or  testing  times  of  life  are  not 
necessarily  events  to  be  dreaded.  They  are  not  in  them- 
selves misfortunes.  That  depends  altogether  upon  our- 
selves. Like  all  of  God's  providences,  they  are  sent  as 
ministers  of  good,  if  wc  treat  them  aright.  They  are  to 
be  dreaded  only  by  the  unready  or  consciously  and  wil- 
fully neglectful.  The  sudden  coming  of  his  master  is  not 
dreaded  by  the  faithful  servant ;  for  it  means  the  recog- 
nition and  probable  reward  of  his  faithfulness.  Only 
he  who  is  consciously  unfaithful  trembles  when  he  hears 
his  master's  footfall.  Even  so  the  coming  of  the  Christ 
is  to  the  diligent  and  worthy  disciple  the  gladdest  of 
all  events  even  though  it  occur  at  the  most'  unlikely 
moment. 

The  story,  I  repeat,  is  a  parable  of  supreme  emer- 
gency ;  but  it  is  also  a  parable  of  character.  The  open- 
ing words  declare  it  to  be  a  picture  of  "the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  i.  e.,  of  Christly  character.  Jesus  says,  "The 
Christly  character  shall  be  likened  unto  ten  virgins,"  etc. 

167 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

We  have,  therefore,  the  two  thoughts  of  character  and 
crisis  linked  together,  but  how? 

Light  clearly  represents  conduct  or  outward  appear- 
ance. That  is  the  natural  interpretation  of  the  figure, 
and  it  is  borne  out  by  our  Lord's  common  usage.  The 
oil  supply  upon  which  the  quality  and  permanence  of 
the  light  depends  typifies  the  character  which  deter- 
mines conduct.  In  the  movement  of  the  story  the  cli- 
max is  reached  with  the  coming  of  the  bridegroom  and 
the  consequent  discovery  of  unreadiness  on  the  one  hand 
and  readiness  on  the  other.    Is  not  the  meaning  plain? 

The  Crisis  is  the  Test  of  Character 

Until  the  emergency  arrives  there  is  no  distinction  ap- 
parent between  the  different  members  of  this  gay  com- 
pany. As  the  maidens  set  out  for  the  place  of  meeting 
you  see  no  reason  to  call  some  wise  and  others  foolish. 
They  are  equally  beautiful  and  attractive.  All  the 
lamps  burn  with  equal  brightness.  While  the  bride- 
groom tarried  they  all  slumbered  and  slept.  Still  no 
difference.  At  the  announcement  of  the  bridegroom's 
approach  all  those  virgins  arose  and  trimmed  their  lamps. 
They  are  equally  prompt,  equally  eager.  But  now  a  dif- 
ference appears.  Five  of  the  lamps  are  quickly  lighted. 
The  other  five  smoke  and  go  out.  Then  comes  the  sad 
exposure  and  confession  of  unreadiness. 

Is  not  the  picture  true  to  life?  Is  it  not  all  too  com- 
mon? We  may  see  the  ten  wherever  we  look.  They 
sit  side  by  side  in  every  church.  They  work  at  the  same 
tasks  in  shop  or  factory  or  market  or  household.  They 
mingle  in  the  same  circles  in  society,  they  engage  in  the 
same  pleasures,  they  participate  in  the  same  popular 
works  of  benevolence,  the  same  externals  of  religious 
worship.  The  outward  behavior  of  all  conforms  to  the 
same  conventional  standards  of  Christian  conduct.  In 
the  quiet  flow  of  ordinary  life  we  cannot  distinguish 
between  them  in  the  matter  of  character.    They  exhibit 

168 


THE       TEN       VIRGINS 

the  common  virtues  and  the  pleasing  quahties  that  make 
them  agreeable  members  of  society.  They  take  their 
place  unquestioned  among  the  saints.  We  cannot  say 
that  this  one  is  wise  and  that  one  foolish,  this  one  pos- 
sessed of  the  true  spiritual  life,  that  one  merely  follow- 
ing the  outward  fashion  of  that  life.  In  fact,  we  are  not 
called  upon  to  pass  judgments  thus  upon  our  fellows. 

Suddenly,  however,  there  comes  an  emergency.  Some 
great  wave  of  disappointment  or  adversity  or  sorrow 
sweeps  over  the  life;  or  perhaps  some  unexpected  wind 
of  prosperity  strikes  upon  it ;  and  how  different  the  effect 
upon  different  individuals!  In  one  case  the  sorrow  or 
the  failure  or  the  trial  only  serves  to  bring  to  view 
strength  and  grace  hitherto  concealed  beneath  a  quiet 
exterior.  There  is  grief  and  disappointment,  very  deep, 
perhaps,  but  beneath  it  there  runs  the  smooth  current 
of  peace  and  trust  that  holds  the  soul  in  quietness.  From 
the  trial  it  comes  forth  with  new  radiance  and  power, 
made  more  than  ever  like  the  Master  by  the  discipline 
of  an  adverse  providence.  Or,  being  lifted  on  a  wav^ 
of  unforeseen  prosperity,  it  suffers  no  loss  of  sweetness 
and  beauty,  but  makes  the  new-found  joy  a  means  of 
larger  kindness  and  help  to  others.  In  another  case,  the 
soul  is  quite  overwhelmed  by  trial  or  swept  wholly  away 
by  temptation.  Instead  of  being  tutored  to  a  larger 
sympathy  by  the  experience  of  sorrow,  there  is  a  nar- 
rowing and  infolding  of  the  soul  upon  itself  that  finds 
expression  in  peevish  repining  that  adds  to  the  already 
sufficient  misery  of  mankind.  No  less  surely  does  the 
exaltation  of  some  sudden  success  in  such  a  one  turn 
the  seeming  goodness  into  vanity  and  pride,  and  accu- 
mulated blessing  only  accentuates  personal  selfishness. 
Before  the  unexpected  test  the  thin  gilding  of  outward 
religion  and  faith  disappears,  exposing  the  weakness  and 
the  sham  beneath. 

So,  always,  the  emergency  is  the  revealer  of  true  char- 
acter; it  is  the  test  of  moral  strength  and  genuineness. 

169 


7 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

As  some  one  has  wisely  said,  "No  man  has  any  more 
religion  than  he  can  command  in  an  emergency."  Hap- 
py is  he  who  can  meet  life's  crises  as  calmly  and  as 
gladly  as  he  meets  the  common  round  of  daily  duty.  He 
alone  is  possessed  of  true  spiritual  strength,,  of  genuine 
manly  and  godly  character. 

Do  not  turn  with  critical  questioning  to  the  conduct 
of  the  wise  virgins  in  refusing  to  share  their  oil  with 
their  sisters  in  the  moment  of  their  dismay.  What 
though  it  seem  unkind?  We  need  not  stumble  at  that 
point.  Whether  kind  or  unkind,  it  is  the  only  possible 
way  to  represent  in  the  action  of  the  story  the  great 
spiritual  fact  for  which  it  stands.  They  might  have 
shared  their  oil ;  but  we  cannot  share  our  character. 
Character  is  not  transferable.  No  man  can  divide  his 
character  with  his  brother.  The  father  cannot  share 
with  the  son  nor  the  mother  with  her  daughter.  Each 
one  of  us  must  possess  character  for  himself  or  be  with- 
out it. 

Even  the  old-time  notion  of  sharing  the  character  of 
Christ  is  obsolete  to-day.  Some  have  so  interpreted 
the  gospel  plan  of  salvation  as  to  make  it  a  scheme 
whereby  the  righteousness  of  Jesus  Christ  imputed  to 
the  believer  becomes  the  ground  of  his  acceptance  with 
God  and  admittance  to  heavenly  joy.  Now  imputed 
righteousness  is  imputed  nonsense,  i.  e.,  it  is  unright- 
eousness. Worse  than  that,  it  is  infinite  fraud.  To  say 
that  God  will  account  you  or  me  as  righteous  when  we 
are  not  because  he  imputes  to  us  the  righteousness  of 
Jesus,  is  to  dishonor  God  by  making  him  the  author  and 
approver  of  the  most  stupendous  lie  ever  perpetrated. 
"But  what,"  you  say,  "shall  we  do  with  St.  Paul  and  his 
doctrine  of  imputed  righteousness  ?"  Why,  interpret  him 
differently!  If  you  cannot  do  so,  then  follow  the  apos- 
tle's own  advice  and  "Let  God  be  true,  but  every  man 
(even  St.  Paul  if  need  be)  a  liar." 

Turn  now  to  the  closing  scene  of  the  parable.  Here  we 

170 


THE       TEN       VIRGINS 

see  the  return  of  the  maidens  from  their  fruitless  quest 
and  their  vain  plea  for  admittance  to  the  feast.  How 
shall  we  interpret  that?  Shall  we  say  that  at  some  time 
even  character  will  not  avail  with  men  or  be  accepted 
of  God?    I  think  not. 

Doubtless  you  have  often  pictured  this  scene  before 
your  mind,  and  this  is  what  has  appeared,  is  it  not? 
The  five  foolish  virgins  with  their  lamps  freshly  filled 
and  an  abundant  supply  of  oil  standing  outside  the 
closed  door  in  a  brilliant  glare  of  their  own  light,  asking 
admission.  But  is  that  a  truthful  picture  ?  Think  a  mo- 
ment. At  what  hour  were  they  awakened?  Midnight. 
What  shops  would  be  open  at  that  hour?  Where  could 
they  hope  to  find  a  fresh  supply  of  oil  then?  True,  they 
were  bidden  to  go  to  them  that  sell  and  buy;  but  that 
was  only  another  way  of  refusing  their  request,  or  an 
indication  of  the  confusion  of  the  moment.  True,  also, 
they  rush  forth ;  but  that  only  shows  their  utter  distrac- 
tion and  helplessness.  After  running  hither  and  thither 
for  a  time  on  their  bootless  errand,  they  gradually  come 
to  their  senses  and  realize  the  cumulative  foolishness  of 
their  conduct.  Then  they  all  come  back  again  in  the 
darkness  with  unlighted  lamps  and  pray  for  admittance ; 
and  it  is  because  they  are  still  unfurnished  with  light 
that  they  are  refused.  The  lamp  was  the  real  passport 
to  the  feast.  It  was  in  the  capacity  of  light  bearers  that 
they  had  come,  and  while  they  are  unable  to  fulfil  the 
purpose  for  which  they  are  commissioned  they  have  no 
place  in  the  festal  gathering. 

Is  the  interpretation  difficult?  Assuredly  not.  Worthy 
character  will  always  be  recognized,  approved,  welcomed, 
whenever  and  wherever  it  presents  itself.  But  there  may 
come  a  time  when  character  can  no  longer  be  developed. 
There  may  be  a  midnight  for  the  human  soul,  a  time 
when  the  desire  for  holiness  shall  cease  or  when  the  ca- 
pacity for  moral  attainment  shall  be  lost.  Regarding 
the  conditions  of  the  future  life  we  can  only  speculate; 

171 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

but  the  laws  which  all  may  observe  in  continuous  oper- 
ation in  the  present  life  tend  rapidly  to  fix  character 
either  for  good  or  ill,  for  weakness  or  strength.  Every 
day  that  we  neglect  to  cultivate  the  true  life  in  our  souls 
that  life  becomes  the  more  difficult  to  attain.  Character 
tends  to  crystallize. 

Or,  taking  the  truth  in  its  more  general  application, 
character  is  never  developed  in  an  emergency.  The 
great  trial  does  not  develop  moral  strength  where  before 
was  weakness  or  indifference.  It  only  brings  out  the 
strength  that  was  latent  and  increases  it  by  exercise. 
The  exigency  of  an  exodus  will  not  make  a  Moses,  but 
it  will  take  a  Moses  already  made  from  the  obscurity  of 
an  Arabian  desert  and  reveal  him  to  a  waiting  world. 
The  conflict  with  slavery  did  not  make  a  Lincoln,  but 
when  a  Lincoln  had  been  made  in  the  quiet  of  humble 
training  it  brought  him  out  into  the  larger  service  and 
by  searching  tests  proved  him  to  be  the  man  of  the  hour. 

The  hour  of  death  is  no  time  in  which  to  prepare  for 
death,  nor  can  any  soul  be  made  ready  for  the  coming 
of  the  Christ  after  the  tokens  of  that  coming  have  ap- 
peared. A  death-bed  repentance  cannot  change  in  a  mo- 
ment the  character  which  has  been  forming  through  long 
years  of  sinful  life;  it  cannot  supply  for  the  emergency 
the  spiritual  attainment  that  has  been  neglected  through 
months  of  idleness  and  indifference.  At  best  it  can  but 
mark  the  beginning  of  a  work  that  must  be  accomplished 
in  another  sphere — if  in  that  other  sphere  there  be  op- 
portunity for  such  accomplishment.  The  majority  of 
such  repentances  are  but  the  cry  of  the  foolish  maidens, 
"Give  us  of  your  oil;  for  our  lamps  are  going  out!" 
Who  would  die  the  death  of  the  righteous  must  live  the 
life  of  the  righteous.    There  is  no  other  way. 

The  crisis,  whatever  it  may  be,  proves  or  reveals  char- 
acter. It  never  develops  or  creates  character.  That  is 
always  accomplished  in  the  quiet  and  ordinary  flow  of 
life.     The  heroism  displayed  on  the  battle-field  is  often 

172 


THE       TEN       VIRGINS 

acquired  in  the  harvest-field.  The  strength  that  mani- 
fests itself  in  the  storm  is  built  up  in  the  sunshine.  The 
peace  that  smiles  in  affliction  grows  in  the  quiet  of  af- 
fection. You  cannot  prepare  for  temptation  or  trial,  for 
adversity  or  prosperity,  when  you  stand  face  to  face 
with  the  emergency.  Then  it  is  too  late.  That  is  the 
time  for  action,  not  for  preparation.  Now,  in  the  time 
of  quiet,  is  the  time  to  grow  strong.  In  time  of  peace 
prepare  for  war.  In  the  calm  trim  your  vessel  for  the 
storm.  In  life  make  ready  for  death.  Open  your  heart 
to  the  Christ  now.  Receive  his  Spirit  now.  Enter  his 
service  now.  Let  your  daily  life  be  the  discipline  which 
shall  make  you  strong  and  brave  and  true.  Let  your 
common  toil  be  the  loom  upon  which  you  weave  a  noble 
character,  the  mine  from  which  you  dig  rich  stores  of 
spiritual  experience.  Then,  when  some  great  trial  or 
opportunity  comes,  when  you  are  suddenly  called  upon 
to  face  some  great  crisis  of  life,  you  can  fall  back  upon 
the  accumulated  strength  of  years  and  it  will  not  fail. 

No  sadder  word  is  found  in  all  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
than  that  spoken  to  the  foolish  virgins,  "The  door  was 
shut."  Opportunity  passed ;  admittance  denied ;  "I  know 
you  not." 

"Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 
The  saddest  are  these,  'It  might  have  been.* " 

Remember,  this  is  not  the  harsh  sentence  of  an  oflfended 
God  who  might,  if  he  chose,  act  differently.  Rather 
is  it  a  simple  picture  of  necessary  truth.  The  outcome 
could  not  be  otherwise  without  doing  violence  to  our 
common  intelligence.  The  crisis  shows  what  you  are. 
If  a  man  is  what  he  ought  to  be  and  may  be,  nothing 
can  be  more  joyful  than  this — to  be  shown  as  he  is. 
But  if  he  be  weak  and  false,  this  same  is  to  him  the 
most  dreadful — to  be  shown  as  he  is. 
Who  can  measure  the  importance  of  the  uneventful, 

173 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

the  significance  of  the  commonplace  in  life?  This  quiet 
flow  of  daily  toil  and  service  which  we  so  often  think  of 
with  contempt,  this  even  motion  of  ordinary  drudgery 
which  we  would  so  gladly  escape,  is  the  growing  time 
of  character,  the  precious  opportunity  for  gaining 
strength^  the  exercise  by  which  our  spiritual  muscles  are 
hardened  for  conflict  and  victory. 

Your  life  moves  on  quietly  and  inconspicuously,  and 
you  think  that  you  have  no  call  to  be  careful  or  to  strive 
for  power.  All  your  experience  is  attuned  to  the  hum- 
drum. What  call  for  great  moral  development?  What 
reward  for  effort?  Wait.  The  emergency  will  come, 
and  when  you  least  expect  it;  not  the  emergency  you 
look  for,  but  one  altogether  unexpected.  You  will  be 
ready?  Suppose  it  is  the  failure  of  your  most  cherished 
plans ;  suppose  it  is  the  loss  of  the  one  you  love  best ; 
suppose  it  is  some  insidious  temptation ;  will  you  be  pre- 
pared to  meet  the  test  and  to  come  off  victorious?  Take 
the  one  great,  all-embracing  emergency — if  the  Christ 
should  come,  are  you  ready  to  meet  him?  If  you  knew 
that  he  would  come  with  to-morrow's  dawning,  would 
you  wish  to  make  any  change  in  your  life  by  way  of 
preparation?  Beware!  Midnight  is  no  time  to  be 
searching  the  markets  for  oil.  Fill  your  lamps  now 
while  the  day  lasts  and  the  markets  are  open.  Happy 
is  he  who  so  lives  every  day  that  no  emergency  can  dis- 
tract him,  nor  any  crisis  betray  him.  Happy  is  he  who 
is  ever  ready  for  the  coming  of  the  Christ. 

Life  is  opportunity;  death  is  emergency;  judgment 
is  revelation :  destiny  is  fruition.  Wisely  use  life's  op- 
importunity,  and  thou  shalt  neither  dread  death's  emer- 
gency nor  fear  the  judgment's  revelation.  The  rather 
shalt  thou  gladly  welcome  both  as  necessary  forerunners 
of  a  joyous  and  eternal  fruition. 


174 


The  Law  of 
Character 


CHAPTER  XIV 

The  Law  of 
Character 

THE  TALENTS 

Matt.  25:14-30 

Text. — "Unto  enjery  one  that  hath  shall  be  given.  "—Matt.  25 :  29 

AMONG  the  New  Testament  stories  few  are 
more  familiar  than  the  parable  of  The 
Talents,  and  few  are  more  frequently  read 
by  the  disciple  or  expounded  by  the 
preacher.  Perhaps,  however,  its  last  mes- 
sage has  not  yet  been  spoken.  Perhaps  it  will  yield 
fresh  thought  to  us  even  at  the  present  moment  if  we 
study  it  once  more  in  the  light  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

I  venture  the  assertion  that  most  of  us  have  been  wont 
to  interpret  this  as  a  parable  of  two  worlds.  The  first 
scene,  we  say,  is  laid  in  this  world.  It  represents  the 
life  that  now  is  in  its  relation  to  human  destiny,  and  we 
have  called  it  "Probation."  Scene  second  we  have  rele- 
gated to  the  world  to  come,  and  we  have  summed  it  up 
in  the  one  word  "Judgment."  This  mode  of  interpreta- 
tion makes  the  parable  of  The  Talents  a  representation 
of  that  somewhat  remote  and  often  perverted  ideal  of 
the  divine  government. 

Without  calling  in  question  the  correctness  of  this  in- 
terpretation, I  ask  you  to  look  at  the  picture  just  now 
from' another  standpoint,  not  that  we  may  discover  a 
different  truth,  but  that  we  may  study  the  same  truth 
on  a  different  scale.    You  look  directly  at  the  earth  and 

177 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

you  see  but  a  small  portion  of  its  surface.  From  the 
loftiest  mountain  peak  and  aided  by  the  most  powerful 
telescope  the  area  seen  is  still  inconsiderable.  The  geo- 
graphical knowledge  to  be  acquired  by  such  a  method 
would  be,  for  the  average  man,  exceedingly  limited  and 
incomplete.  But  using  a  globe  or  a  map  which  brings 
the  entire  surface  of  the  earth  before  us  in  a  picture 
and  on  a  reduced  scale,  the  study  of  that  surface  is  made 
easy  and  the  pupils  in  our  common  schools  can  tell  us 
much  about  the  lands  on  all  parts  of  the  globe,  even 
though  they  have  never  traveled  beyond  the  boundaries 
of  their  native  village.  So  the  process  of  the  divine 
government  as  it  extends  from  time  to  eternity,  from 
this  world  to  the  next,  is  beyond  our  ken ;  but  it  has  its 
miniature,  like  the  pupil's  map,  which  we  see  every  day, 
and  we  may  both  understand  this  smaller  representation 
and  from  it  learn  much  regarding  the  infinitely  larger 
truth. 

Noting  the  connection  of  the  parable  with  what  goes 
before,  we  see  that  it  is  a  parable  of  the  "kingdom  of 
heaven,"  even  though  the  words  have  been  omitted  in 

Hhe  Revised  Version.  In  other  words,  it  is  a  panorama 
of  the  development  and  destruction  of  character;  and 
that  is  not  something  remote  or  mysterious  or  difficult 

■^  to  understand.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  process  that  we 
see  daily  working  itself  out  in  our  midst ;  yes,  a  process 
that  is  going  on  continually  towards  one  goal  or  the 
other  in  every  human  life.  We  may  observe  it,  if  we 
will,  at  every  stage  of  either  the  development  or  the 
destruction — the  beginnings,  the  progress,  and  the  com- 
pleted result.  It  is  not  at  all  a  question  of  what  may 
happen  in  another  world  and  under  other  conditions, 
but  of  what  is  happening  in  this  world  and  under  our 

;  very  eyes.     The   conditions   and   influences   of   eternity 

"are  but  the  conditions  and  influences  of  this  present 
time  projected  upon  an  infinitely  larger  scale.  The 
eternal  is  the  real  world,  God's  world ;  and  this  temporal 

178 


THE  TALENTS 

is  only  our  little  map  upon  which  we  trace  out  the  grand 
divisions  and  outlines  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

The  Law  of  Character,  i.  e.,  of  its  development  or  de- 
struction, is  the  topic  of  our  parable.  Analyzing  the 
story,  we  discover  the  successive  steps  which  result  on 
the  one  hand  in  ennobled  manhood  and  on  the  other  in 
spiritual  degeneracy.  First  in  order  comes  the  picture 
of  development  or  growth. 

A  wealthy  proprietor,  going  on  a  long  journey,  dis- 
tributes his  property  among  his  servants,  giving  to  one 
five  talents,  to  another  two,  and  to  another  one,  and  de- 
parts. Of  the  first  and  second  servants  it  is  said  that 
they  immediately  began  to  trade  with  the  money  en- 
trusted to  them  and  doubled  it.  In  other  words,  they 
did  just  as  they  would  have  done  had  their  lord  been 
present  to  watch  and  direct  them,  and  their  faithfulness 
is  the  first  step  towards  success. 

Character  is  independent  of  gifts.  The  distribution  of 
the  talents  is  not  equal.  One  receives  five,  another  two 
and  another  one,  and  so  on ;  each  receiving  "according  to 
his  several  ability."  But  when  the  reckoning  comes,  the 
reward  and  commendation  bestowed  upon  the  man  who 
had  received  but  two  talents  and  had  gained  but  twa 
are  precisely  the  same  as  to  him  who  had  received  and 
gained  five  talents.  The  basis  of  both  reward  and  com- 
mendation is  faithfulness. 

The  analogy  is  perfect.     With  all  due  apologies  to 
John   Hancock  and  the  other  framers  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  I  venture  to  assert  that  all  men  are 
not  created  equal,  even  though  they  are  created  free. 
On  the  contrary,  the  most  superficial  observer  cannot  fail 
to  discern  great  differences  in  men  as  they  are  born  into 
the  world.    Some  men  are  born  with  weak  minds,  others 
with  strong  intellectual  powers.    One  man  is  born  a  gen-     . 
ius,  another  a  drudge.     One  has  naturally  fine  tastes.  / 
another  is  by  nature  coarse  and  unappreciative.     Hered-  \ 
ity  is  a  prominent  factor  in  human  life;  and  heredity 

179 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

means  inequality  at  birth.  Our  parable,  therefore,  pre- 
sents an  absolutely  truthful  picture  of  our  common  life 
in  this  phase  of  it.  The  inequalities  of  gift  are  brought 
out  in  a  manner  that  is  unmistakable.  We  cannot  escape 
or  ignore  the  facts  in  the  case. 

While,  however,  we  acknowledge  this  self-evident  in- 
equality of  natural  gifts  in  man,  we  are  assured  that  the 
Christly  character  is  entirely  independent  of  these  gifts. 
The  real  worth  of  any  human  life  is  determined  not  by 
the  materials  with  which  it  builds,  but  by  the  structure 
which  it  rears  with  those  materials.  The  genius  is  often 
a  man  of  unworthy  character,  while  the  world  has  seen 
many  a  saint  who  had  few  natural  gifts  and,  perhaps, 
trifling  mental  power.  With  God  capacity  is  always  the 
measure  of  responsibility,  and  faithfulness  alone  deter- 
mines merit.  Or  better,  since  we  are  concerned  with  at- 
tainment rather  than  with  judgment,  character  grows 
just  in  proportion  as  we  use  well  or  ill  the  opportunities 
and  the  gifts  that  are  entrusted  to  us.  I  know  a  man  who 
has  built  a  noble  mansion  from  stones  which  his  neigh- 
bors willingly  contributed  because  they  thought  them 
worthless.  Have  you  not  also  seen  men  building  strong 
characters  and  hewing  out  useful  lives  from  gifts  which 
their  fellow  men  have  looked  upon  with  contempt?  One 
may  construct  a  miserable  hovel  out  of  costliest  marble, 
or  he  may  create  a  magnificent  temple  from  pudding- 
stone.  Even  in  material  building  the  skill  and  purpose 
of  the  architect  count  for  more  than  the  stuflF  which 
offers  itself  to  his  use.  Much  more  true  is  it  that  in 
spiritual  building  native  gifts  and  inborn  talents  are 
wholly  subordinate  to  personal  faithfulness  and  industry. 

A  second  element  in  the  right  development  of  charac- 
ter is  confidence.  Both  of  the  faithful  servants  bring 
their  money  with  its  gains  and  render  a  simple  account 
of  service  to  their  lord  without  comment  or  explanation. 
Character  makes  no  apology,  it  offers  no  excuse ;  for 
these  are  not  needed.    The  man  who  brings  two  talents 

180 


THE  TALENTS 

is  not  called  upon  to  explain  that  he  has  not  five  talents. 
He  makes  a  brief  and  businesslike  statement:  "Lord, 
thou  deliveredst  unto  me  two  talents :  lo,  1  have  gained 
other  two  talents."  There  is  in  his  report  that  same 
ring  of  manly  pride  in  service  well  and  faithfully  per- 
formed that  characterized  the  report  of  the  man  with 
five  talents.  Yet  we  do  not  accuse  him  of  conceit  or 
vanity.     It  is  the  natural,  the  proper  attitude. 

The  same  quiet  confidence  growing  out  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  right  ought  to  characterize  our  religious 
life.  Jesus  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  his  own  right- 
eousness and  to  call  upon  others  to  follow  his  example. 
When  St.  Paul  is  leaving  Ephesus,  as  he  bids  farewell 
to  the  brethren,  he  does  not  apologize  for  any  imperfec- 
tions in  his  life  or  failure  in  his  service.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  calls  them  to  witness  how  holily  and  up- 
rightly he  has  lived  among  them,  and  how  he  has  not 
failed  to  preach  to  them  the  whole  gospel  of  Christ. 
More  than  this,  he  even  challenges  certain  disciples,  to 
whom  he  writes,  with  the  words,  "Be  ye  imitators  of  me, 
even  as  I  also  am  of  Christ." 

From  such  a  manly  assertion  of  integrity  it  is  a  far  cry 
to  the  modern  "profession  of  holiness,"  which  finds  no 
warrant  in  the  Scriptures.  The  one  is  consistent  with 
the  profoundest  humility;  the  other  is  the  sign  manual 
of  spiritual  pride.  The  one  is  the  frank  challenge  of 
criticism ;  the  other  a  presumptuous  claim  that  repudiates 
the  right  of  criticism. 

True  character  stands  unabashed  and  confident  before 
the  scrutiny  of  the  world  and  makes  no  excuses.  It  is 
like  Jacob  confronting  Laban  with  a  challenge  to  point 
to  any  dishonesty  in  his  dealings,  or  like  the  Hebrew 
youths  before  the  king  of  Babylon,  or  like  Peter  and 
John  before  the  Jewish  Sanhedrin,  virile  not  vain,  cour- 
ageous not  conceited,  strong  and  impregnable  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  duty  well  done,  of  opportunity  used  to  the 
full. 

181 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

But  the  climax  is  yet  to  come.    Character  not  only  in- 
spires courage,  it  gives  power  also.    To  the  faithful  man 
comes  first  confidence,  then  sovereignty.     Whether  wit'.i 
;two  talents  or  with  five,  he  hears  the  words,  "Well  done, 
good  and  faithful  servant :  thou  hast  been  faithful  over 
'  a  few  things,  I  will  set  thee  over  many  things ;  enter  thou 
/  into  the  joy  of  thy  lord."    This  is  what  always  happens 
[  to  the  faithful  in  any  sphere.  Character  working  through 
\  service  transforms  the  servant  into  a  sovereign.    In  our 
]  daily  life  the  growth  of  character  always  involves  the  ac- 
l  quirement  of  dominion.     Man  begins  life  as  a  servant. 
As  he  develops  the  Christly  character  he  gradually  ob- 
j  tains  the  mastery — the  mastery  over  self,  the  mastery 
over  sin,  the  mastery  over  appetite  and  passion  and  in- 
dulgence, the  mastery  over  difficulty  and  trial  and  pain 
and  sorrow.    And  we  cannot  yet  say  how  far  this  mas- 
tery may  be  carried  in  its  dominion  over  the  forces  and 
phenomena  of  the  universe  in  which  we  live. 

We  share  the  dominion  and  the  joy  of  the  Christ  as  we 
grow  in  likeness  to  his  perfect  character ;  and  this  dom- 
inating power  of  character  is  a  principal  element  in  the 
reward  of  faithful  and  holy  living.  This  is  the  glory  of 
the  kingdom  of  God,  that  authority  and  honor  come  not 
from  great  opportunities  and  exceptional  gifts  which  are 
the  accidents  of  humanity,  but  from  faithfulness  in  the 
use  of  even  the  smallest  privileges. 

Faithfulness,  confidence,  sovereignty,  these  three  are 
the  invariable  tokens  of  the  true  development  of  Christly 
character.  Without  the  first  there  can  be  neither  great- 
ness nor  goodness.  Without  it  neither  genius  nor  culture 
can  insure  a  noble  life.  With  it  the  humblest  materials 
may  be  transformed  into  the  attributes  of  perfect  saint- 
hood. The  faithful  man  may  ever  stand  "without  fear 
and  without  reproach"  before  God  and  men ;  and  his 
life  will  not  be  without  abiding  influence  in  the  world. 
His  character  will  become  a  dominating  force  that  shall 

182 


H 


TALENT 


govern  many  and  shall  bring  many  into  the  kingdom  of 

^iTnow  we  have  rightly  interpreted  the  message  of  the 
faithful  servants  in  the  development  of  character,  let  us 
turn  to  the  man  with  one  talent  and  listen  to  his  message 
regarding  moral  and  spiritual  decay.  _ 

The  first  step  towards  moral  rum  is  neglect.  i  went 
away  and  hid  thy  talent  in  the  earth.''  Here  is  no  ef- 
fort at  use  or  gain.  It  matters  not  that  the  neglect  or 
indiflference  was  the  result  of  fear  or  a  misconception  of 
his  lord's  character.  The  vital  thought  is  that  there  was 
no  attempt  to  prepare  for  the  demand  which  was  sure 
to  be  made  upon  him.  True,  he  had  but  one  talent;  but 
had  he  been  entrusted  with  ten  talents  the  result  would 
have  been  proportionately  worse,  since  a  greater  sum 
would  have  been  allowed  to  lie  in  idleness. 

Neglect  is  the  beginning  of  all  worthlessness.  Men 
may  complain  as  they  please  about  the  poverty  of  their 
gifts,  lack  of  opportunity,  the  unreasonableness  and  se- 
verity of  God's  requirements ;  none  of  these  things  can 
hinder  the  attainment  of  noblest  character  or  the  achieve- 
ment of  most  perfect  service  if  there  be  an  earnest  pur- 
pose and  a  spirit  of  true  service  on  the  part  of  the  in- 
dividual. Unlettered  fishermen  became  the  first  apostles 
and  preachers  of  the  gospel,  while  learned  Pharisee^ 
like  Nicodemus  and  wealthy  courtiers  like  Joseph  of 
Arimatheea  must  content  themselves  with  the  service  of 
titiHprtPilccrs 

Phillips  Brooks  says,  "There  are  in  all  our  cities  a  great 
multitude  of  useless  men,  and  of  men  perfectly  contented 
in  their  uselessness.  Many  a  man  looks  back  upon  his 
life  and,  save  for  the  kindly  offices  which  he  has  ren- 
dered to  his  immediate  associates,  he  cannot  remember 
one  useful  thing  he  ever  did.  He  never  stood  up  for  a 
good  cause.  He  never  remonstrated  against  an  evil.  He 
never  helped  a  bad  man  to  be  better.  A  merely  useless 
man!     His  life  might  drop  out  of  the  host  to-morrow, 


183 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

and  none  would  miss  a  soldier  from  the  ranks.  No  on- 
set or  defense  would  be  the  weaker  for  his  going.  .  .  . 
It  is  a  child  of  God  being  slowly  made  into  a  man  of  the 
world."  And  the  primary  force  which  works  out  this 
result  is  neglect,  mere  neglect. 

What  follows  neglect?  Apology!  "He  also  that  had 
received  the  one  talent  came  and  said,  Lord,  I  knew  thee 
that  thou  art  a  hard  man — "  Stop  right  there!  No  need 
to  read  any  further.  I'll  warrant  his  lord  knew  what  was 
coming  when  he  began  in  this  way.  Who  begins  his 
account  with  an  apology  confesses  failure  and  wrong  at 
the  outset.  The  making  of  an  excuse  is  an  infallible  token 
of  lapse  of  character. 

We  do  well  to  remember  this  in  our  religious  life  and 
worship.  There  is  altogether  too  much  of  excuse  and 
apology  in  the  religion  of  the  present  day.  Listen  to  the 
preaching  from  our  pulpits.  Hearken  to  the  testimonies 
and  the  prayers  in  our  social  meetings.  Yes,  go  into  the 
meetings  of  our  various  Young  People's  Societies  and 
mark  all  that  is  said  about  failure  or  difficulty  in  keeping 
the  pledge;  for  even  our  young  people  have  caught  the 
disease.  We  frequently  credit  this  manner  of  speech  to 
humility.  It  is  not  humility;  it  is  either  humbug  or  un- 
faithfulness. Whichever  it  is,  there  is  altogether  too 
much  of  it  for  our  spiritual  health  and  progress.  A 
prominent  thinker  of  our  time  has  described  the 
mood  of  many  modern  Christians  as  being  like  that  of 
"the  man  in  Sterne's  'Sentimental  Journey'  whom  a  mule 
was  about  to  kick — the  attitude  of  humble  apology." 

The  average  confession  in  public  prayer,  I  say,  is  either 
a  token  of  unfaithful  living  or  it  is  the  expression  of  con- 
scious untruthfulness ;  and  it  were  difficult  to  say  which 
is  worse.  It  is  high  time  that  men  should  cease  to  talk 
of  God  as  a  hard  Master,  or  religious  duty  and  spiritual 
attainment  as  impossible,  of  the  burdens  and  crosses  of 
the  Christian  life,  and  should  begin  to  assume  a  more 
manly  attitude.     Blessed  is  the  man  who  never  makes  ( 

184 


THE  TALENTS 

^an  excuse!  for,  although  men  may  call  him  conceited, 
verily  he  is  not  far  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Adam 
never  apologized  for  his  appearance  till  he  committed 
his  first  sin ;  and  from  the  Creation  until  now  conscious  , 
sin  and  culpable  failure  have  been  the  fruitful  sources 
of  all  apology.    Excuses  have  no  place  in  the  true  life. 

The  progress  of  moral  decay  is  swift  and  sure.  First, 
neglect,  then  excuse  or  apology,  and  then  spiritual  loss. 
"Take  therefore  the  talent  from  him/'  is  the  sentence 
pronounced  by  the  angry  master  upon  the  unfaithful  ser- 
vant. Who  fails  to  use  his  gift  or  his  opportunity  will 
lose  it.  If  the  worst  result  of  unfaithfulness  were  the 
shame  of  confession,  if  the  progress  of  evil  ended  with 
apology  or  even  with  some  arbitrary  punishment  discon- 
nected with  the  sin,  that  were  bad  enough.  But  when 
to  the  shame  and  confusion  of  the  unfaithful  one  is 
added  loss  of  power  to  develop  character,  that  is  un-  ^ 
speakably  worse.  --■'' 

And  that  is  the  certain  result  of  faithlessness.     Look  * 
where  you  will  you  may  see  the  law  at  work  with  terrible 
regularity.  A  muscle  is  unused.  What  of  it?  Merely  that 
no  valuable  work  is  accomplished?    No;  far  worse  than 
that.    The  muscle  itself  perishes.     The  skilful  musician 
neglects  his  art.    Day  after  day  passes  and  he  leaves  his 
instrument  untouched.     Friends   wait   in  vain   for  the 
sweet  tones  that  have  so  often  delighted  their  ears.   The 
symphonies  are  not  rendered,  the  oratorios  are  silent. 
The  weeks  are  impoverished;  but  that  is  a  trifle.     The 
worst  is  yet  to  come.     At  length  he  seeks  the  organ 
once  more  and  runs  his  fingers  over  the  keys.     Alas!   . 
where  is  his  old-time  skill?    The  hands  have  forgotten  ; 
their  cunning.    The  joints  are  stiff  and  awkward.    The 
artist  has  degenerated  into  a  bungler. 

No  less  sure  is  the  operation  of  law  in  the  higher  realm. 

Moral  power  unused  decreases.     Spiritual  gifts  held  irj 

idleness  invariably  deteriorate.     Character  is  paralyzed 

by  inactivity.     Not  only  do  we  wrong  our  Maker  and 

185 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

our  fellow  men  when  we  fail  to  exert  a  true  and  help- 
ful influence  in  the  world,  but  we  ruin  ourselves  by  de- 
stroying our  moral  power.  We  hear  a  great  deal  and 
we  say  a  great  deal  about  the  sin  and  the  danger  of 
wrong-doing;  and  we  often  forget  that  there  is  another 
sin  equally  heinous,  another  danger  equally  grave,  the 
sin  and  the  danger  of  doing  nothing  at  all.  And  this  is 
its  penalty,  "He  that  sinneth  .  .  .  wrongeth  his  own 
soul !" 

If  now  we  have  rightly  interpreted  our  parable,  it 
presents  to  us  on  the  one  hand  a  picture  of  spiritual  de- 
velopment through  faithfulness  to  confidence  and  sover- 
eignty, and  on  the  other  hand  the  progress  of  moral  de- 
generation through  neglect  to  apology  and  utter  loss. 
These  two  pictures  are  blended  into  one  and  formulated 
into  a  general  law  in  the  words,  "Unto  every  one  that 
hath  shall  be  given,  and  he  shall  have  abundance:  but 
from  him  that  hath  not,  even  that  which  he  hath  shall 
be  taken  away."  Moral  power  employed  crystallizes  into 
character;  neglected,  it  evaporates.  -^ 

As  we  observe  the  working  of  this  law  in  the  world 
about  us,  do  we  not  sometimes  feel  that  it  is  the  em- 
bodiment of  injustice  and  wrong?  For  example,  a  young 
man  enters  professional  life.  After  a  long  period  of 
study  and  preparation,  in  which  he  has  expended  all  his 
means  and  perhaps  accumulated  a  load  of  debt,  he  rents 
an  office  and  puts  out  a  sign.  He  may  be  a  lawyer  or 
a  physician.  Day  after  day  he  waits  eagerly  for  clients 
or  patients.  As  he  waits,  he  sees  a  throng  continually 
passing  his  door  to  go  to  the  office  of  some  older  and 
more  wealthy  attorney  who  already  has  more  business 
than  he  can  attend  to,  or  to  some  physician  who  is  worn 
out  with  an  overwhelming  practise  and  wishes  for 
nothing  more  than  an  opportunity  to  rest.  While  these 
wealthy  ones  are  receiving  more  and  more  every  day, 
he  thinks  of  his  unpaid  board  bill  and  office  rent,  and 
wonders  if  he  will  ever  be  able  to  settle  them.     Can  you 

186 


THE  TALENTS 

wonder  if  he  mutters  under  his  breath,  "Ah,  yes,  that  is 
always  the  way.  Unto  him  that  hath  shall  be  given  and 
he  shall  have  abundance,  but  from  him  that  hath  not  shall 
be  taken  away  even  that  which  he  hath"?  Sometimes 
the  young  man  almost  despairs  and  feels  that  the  affairs 
of  this  world  are  controlled  by  a  very  unjust  and  partial 
Providence.  But  is  it  so?  Is  not  the  very  difficulty  of 
securing  the  beginnings  of  success  the  strongest  pos- 
sible incentive  to  high  endeavor?  Does  not  the  disci- 
pline of  waiting  and  discouragement  call  forth  the  very 
best  qualities  of  our  manhood  and  womanhood?  To  re- 
verse the  order  were  to  put  a  premium  on  callow  and 
imperfect  service;  it  were  to  remove  the  only  solid  and 
permanent  foundation  of  character. 

No,  this  universal  law  of  growth  through  service,  this 
eternal  truth  that  nothing  succeeds  like  success,  is  neither 
unjust  nor  hard.  If  we  look  at  it  aright,  we  shall  see  in 
it  the  expression  of  the  necessary  and  beneficent  law  of 
character.  That  law  is  not  an  arbitrary  enactment  of 
an  external  and  omnipotent  ruler ;  it  is  the  natural  work- 
ing out  of  a  moral  principle  within  ourselves ;  it  is  the 
inevitable  expression  of  our  own  spiritual  life  as  we 
direct  it  toward  the  good  or  the  evil.  To  the  weak  and 
the  unworthy  such  a  law  must  ever  be  an  object  of 
terror  and  disheartenment ;  but  to  the  strong,  the  earnest, 
the  faithful  soul,  it  is  a  continual  inspiration  and  a  sure 
promise  of  ultimate  triumph. 


187 


Christly  Character  the 
Kingdom  of  God 


CHAPTER  XV 

Christly  Character  the 
Kingdom  of  God 

THE    POUNDS 
Luke  19:11-27 

Text. — ^*They  supposed  that  the  kingdom  of  God  nvas  immediately  to 
appear. ' ' — Luke  19:11 

HERE  is  an  error  old  as  the  gospel,  new  as  the 
morning,  and  persistent  as  the  power  of 
evil.  In  outward  form  it  varies  with  the 
passing  years;  in  essence  it  remains  ever 
the  same.  Men  think  and  speak  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  as  an  immediate  creation  of  the 
Almighty,  wholly  external  to  themselves  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  laws  and  relations  of  life  as  they  know 
it.  They  picture  to  their  minds  a  new  order  of  society 
into  which  we  may  enter  or  from  which  we  may  be  ex- 
cluded according  to  the  good  pleasure  of  the  King. 
Those  first  followers  of  Jesus  looked  for  the  establish- 
ment of  that  kingdom  upon  this  earth  from  material 
elements.  It  would  simply  be  a  new  and  greater  Roman 
empire,  conquering  all  others  and  being  established  on 
a  permanent  and  invincible  basis.  Only  in  greatness 
and  power  would  it  differ  from  the  kingdoms  already  ex- 
isting. We  of  to-day  have  put  aside  that  notion  as  crude 
and  materialistic.  But  what  have  we  accepted  in  its  place  ? 
A  future  kingdom  instead  of  a  present  one.  We  defer 
the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  a  future 
state,  and  flatter  ourselves  that  our  conception  is  spiritual. 

191 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

Practically,  however,  the  two  conceptions  are  identical. 
According  to  both  the  kingdom  is  external,  it  is  largely 
a  matter  of  location  and  circumstance,  and  the  question 
of  citizenship  rests  with  a  Power  outside  ourselves ;  is, 
in  short,  a  matter  of  favor  or  grace.  How  many  per- 
sons still  talk  of  "salvation"  as  though  it  meant  get- 
ting into  heaven !  Again  and  again  we  hear  them  say 
that  they  will  "take  their  chances,"  evidently  supposing 
that  their  relation  to  the  heavenly  kingdom  will  be 
determined  by  the  King  on  conditions  more  or  less  ar- 
bitrary and  uncertain.  In  all  cases  it  is  the  same  error, 
viz.,  the  expectation  that  the  kingdom  of  God  will  ap- 
pear, i.  e.,  that  it  will  assume  some  external  form  and 
will  consist  of  institutions  and  orders  and  classes  of 
society  to  be  entered  from  without. 

To  this  persistent  error  we  have  a  permanent  answer 
in  the  parable  of  The  Pounds.  And  this  parable  comes 
to  us  to-day  with  all  the  directness  and  significance  that 
characterized  its  original  utterance. 

At  the  basis  of  the  parable  lies  a  historic  incident.  On 
the  death  of  Herod  the  Great  his  son  Archelaus  went 
to  Rome  to  secure  the  appointment  as  successor  to  his 
kingdom.  At  the  same  time  there  went  from  Judea  an 
embassy  of  citizens  to  oppose  the  appointment.  The 
principal  result  of  their  effort  was  to  increase  the  cruelty 
which  they  sought  to  avert.  This  incident  was  of  course 
familiar  to  our  Lord's  hearers,  and  would  give  added 
significance  to  the  lesson  which  he  drew  from  it.  Fur- 
thermore, this  historic  framework  marks  the  unquestion- 
able individuality  of  the  parable  and  clearly  distinguishes 
it  from  all  others. 

In  not  a  few  minds  the  parable  of  The  Pounds  has 
been  confused  with  that  of  The  Talents,  and  they  have 
been  looked  upon  as  two  forms  of  one  story.  The 
question  has  been  raised  by  expositors.  Did  Jesus  real- 
ly utter  two  parables  so  similar  in  form  ?  Or  have  we 
two  diverse  reports  of  one  story?     Scholarly  criticism 

19S 


THE POUNDS 

has  asked  the  question,  but  the  profoundest  scholarship 
can  never  answer  it.  The  unanimous  agreement  of 
scholars  would  prove  nothing  on  either  side.  And  what 
need?  As  they  come  to  us  the  parables  are  certainly 
not  one  but  two,  revealing  distinct  features,  embodying 
distinct  messages.  The  two  messages  are  equally  true, 
equally  divine.  We  cannot  confuse  them  without  loss. 
We  cannot  spare  either  one. 

Despite  a  general  similarity  the  two  parables  present 
several  points  of  sharp  and  significant  contrast;  and  a 
careful  study  serves  to  emphasize  the  points  of  contrast 
rather  than  those  of  similarity.  While  the  parable  of 
The  Pounds  is  palpably  suggestive  of  the  historic  inci- 
dent already  referred  to,  there  is  no  hint  of  such  his- 
toric basis  in  the  parable  of  The  Talents.  The  limited 
parallelism  of  the  two  stories  serves  to  bring  out  as 
nothing  else  could  certain  contrasted  truths  regarding 
human  life. 

In  the  parable  of  The  Talents  we  have  set  forth  in- 
equality of  gifts  with  equality  of  service.  In  that  of 
The  Pounds  this  condition  is  reversed,  and  we  have  equal- 
ity of  gifts  with  inequality  of  service.  The  story  of  The 
Talents  offers  a  simple  contrast  between  faithfulness  and 
unfaithfulness.  The  story  of  The  Pounds  embodies  a 
more  complex  idea.  Its  fourfold  distinction  suggests 
numberless  gradations  between  perfect  loyalty  and  open 
hostility.  Moreover,  the  one  parable  ends  with  a  gener- 
al statement  of  reward  and  penalty,  while  the  other 
shows  the  exact  proportion  between  service  and  reward. 
And  finally,  the  parable  of  The  Pounds  contains  an  ele- 
ment not  found  at  all  in  the  parable  of  The  Talents,  i.  e., 
the  distinction  between  servants  and  citizens. 

If  we  have  clearly  distinguished  in  our  minds  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  two  parables,  let  us  analyze  the  picture 
before  us. 

The  story  opens  with  an  equal  distribution  of  money 
to  the  servants  of  the  king,  one  pound  to  each,  as  he 

193 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

is  about  to  depart  on  a  mission  of  importance.  The 
group  of  unfriendly  citizens  who  send  a  committee  to 
oppose  his  petition  is  added  to  complete  the  picture  and 
to  round  out  its  lesson. 

The  parable  of  The  Talents,  by  its  unequal  distribution 
of  money,  "to  one  five  talents,  to  another  two,  and  to  an- 
other one,"  represents  the  inequalities  of  gift  and  environ- 
ment and  heredity  which  characterize  different  individ- 
uals as  they  come  into  the  world.  The  fact  of  such 
inequality  no  one  can  question.  Its  significance  we  have 
already  considered  in  the  study  of  the  other  parable. 
The  parable  of  The  Pounds,  on  the  other  hand,  calls  at- 
tention to  the  truth  that,  while  there  is  a  real  and  impor- 
tant difference  in  men,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  all  are 
absolutely  equal.  All  cannot  accomplish  an  equal  work 
in  the  world,  but  each  one  has  an  equal  chance  with  all 
his  fellows  to  do  his  best,  to  make  the  most  of  that  which 
he  has. 

The  robin  cannot  by  most  strenuous  effort  become 
an  eagle,  but  he  can  be  a  perfect  robin.  A  Kitto,  reared 
in  an  almshouse,  cannot  vie  with  the  university  gradu- 
ate in  learning  and  grace,  but  he  can  hew  out  from  such 
materials  as  he  has  a  saintly  character  and  can  leave  a 
work  that  shall  bless  his  fellow  men.  A  bootblack  and 
an  artist  differ  widely  in  gifts  and  environment,  but  it 
is  the  equal  privilege  of  each  to  be  the  best  in  his  sphere. 
The  limitations  of  the  one  need  not  hinder  him  from  giv- 
ing the  very  best  polish  in  the  city,  nor  can  the  natural 
talents  and  beautiful  surroundings  of  the  other  excuse 
him  for  any  failure  to  produce  the  best  work  of  which 
he  is  capable.  In  this  they  are  equal.  "She  hath  done 
what  she  could"  is  the  record  of  perfect  achievement, 
and  it  is  a  record  equally  possible  for  all. 

Then  why  should  any  man  stand  idly  about  complain- 
ing, "I  have  no  chance  in  the  world"?  Man,  you  have 
a  chance  to  do  your  best!  No  man  has  more.  In  this 
you  are  the  peer  of  the  millionaire,  though  you  have  but 

194  r 


THE POUNDS 

two  mites,  the  peer  of  the  scholar,  though  you  cannot 
read,  the  peer  of  the  genius,  though  you  may  be  a  plod- 
der all  your  days.  Shakespeare,  Michael  Angelo,  Emer- 
son, Washington,  did  no  more,  could  do  no  more.  Nay, 
with  reverence  be  it  said,  Jesus  Christ  himself  could 
do  no  more.  You  have  looked  at  life  long  enough  ex- 
clusively through  the  parable  of  The  Talents.  Its  ])icture 
of  inequality  has  blinded  you  to  the  larger  truth.  Change 
your  lens  and  look  for  a  time  through  the  parable  of  The 
Pounds.  Note  the  equalities.  You  have  only  one  pound? 
No  more  had  others.  The  partition  was  exactly  equal. 
The  chance  to  make  the  most  of  yourself,  that  is  what 
is  common  to  all.  The  best  with  what  you  have,  that 
is  the  divine  requirement  for  all  alike.  Who  does  that 
is  perfect.  Who  fails  to  do  that,  though  he  may  make 
a  great  show  of  achievement,  cannot  secure  the  approval 
of  his  conscience  or  his  God.  Let  us  emphasize  this 
truth.  Only  a  shallow  and  superficial  judgment  meas- 
ures worth  by  achievement  alone.  Faithfulness,  de- 
sire, purpose,  these  are  the  units  of  measurement  that 
God  uses. 

Starting  from  this  point,  we  are  next  confronted  by 
the  fact  that  the  possible  spiritual  attitudes  or  relations 
to  God  are  not  two  but  four ;  or,  to  be  more  exact,  there 
are  four  attitudes  portrayed  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
suggest  many.  In  a  word,  spiritual  gradations  are 
numberless.  The  four  attitudes  represented  in  our  para- 
ble are  these:  (a)  perfect  fidelity,  (b)  easy  mediocrity, 
(c)   fatal  inactivity,  (d)  open  hostility. 

When  the  king  returns  from  his  journey  the  servants 
of  his  household  are  called  to  account,  and  three  typical 
cases  are  recorded. 

First  comes  one  and  proudly  renders  his  account; — 
"Lord,  thy  pound  hath  gained  ten  pounds."  By  com- 
mon consent  this  man  represents  perfect  faithfulness. 
He  has  used  his  opportunities  to  the  full.  He  has  been 
diligent,   careful,   wise   and   faithful.     The   master   rec- 

195 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

ognizes  his  faithfulness  and  responds  with  hearty  words 
of  approval.  "Well,  thou  good  servant:  because  thou 
hast  been  faithful  in  a  very  little,  have  thou  authority 
over  ten  cities." 

How  pleasing  to  the  servant  must  have  been  this  dec- 
laration of  his  lord's  approval !  Yet  it  was  only  what 
the  man's  own  conscience  had  already  uttered.  He 
knew  that  he  had  been  faithful.  He  knew  that  he  had 
made  the  most  possible  with  his  pound.  And  that  is 
the  privilege  of  every  one  of  us,  to  know  when  we  are 
faithful.  Our  faithfulness  may  not  always  win  the  rec- 
ognition and  approval  of  men;  but  that  need  not  trou- 
ble us.  There  is  no  uncertainty,  no  inscrutability  in  the 
judgments  of  God.  They  are  always  in  perfect  har- 
mony with  the  real  declarations  of  conscience.  Who 
would  know  God's  thoughts  regarding  his  life  and  con- 
duct has  only  to  be  honest  with  himself.  If  you  want  it 
in  Bible  phrase^  here  it  is.  "Beloved,  if  our  heart  con- 
demn us  not,  then  have  we  confidence  toward  God.'* 

Now  comes  the  second  servant.  His  statement  is, 
"Lord,  thy  pound  hath  gained  five  pounds."  Now  do  not 
make  the  mistake  of  identifying  this  man  with  the  two 
talent  man  of  the  other  parable.  They  are  not  moral  equiv- 
alents. Rather  do  they  embody  a  vital  point  of  difference 
between  the  parables  that  is  often  overlooked.  The 
achievement  of  the  man  with  two  talents  was  equally 
praiseworthy  with  that  of  the  man  with  ten  talents;  for 
each  had  gained  a  hundred  per  cent  on  his  trust.  But 
in  the  parable  we  are  now  studying,  the  first  man  had 
gained  one  thousand  per  cent,  while  the  second  had  gained 
but  five  hundred.  The  gain  in  both  cases  is  large, 
and  readily  wins  popular  applause.  Nevertheless,  the 
gain  of  this  second  man,  large  as  it  is  when  considered 
by  itself,  does  not  represent  complete  faithfulness.  It 
was  possible  to  realize  a  thousand  per  cent  and  he  has 
earned  but  five  hundred  per  cent.    The  first,  therefore, 

196 


THE  POUNDS 

represents  the  limit  of  possibility  through  untiring  ser- 
vice ;  the  second,  easy-going  mediocrity. 

As  this  man  makes  his  statement,  you  notice  the  ab- 
sence of  approving  words  v^^hich  had  greeted  the  report 
of  his  fellow.  It  is  not,  "Well,  thou  good  servant" ;  but 
simply,  "Be  thou  also  over  five  cities."  In  this  case  also 
the  words  of  the  king  are  but  an  echo  of  the  declaration 
of  the  man's  own  conscience.  He  knew  as  \wt\\  as  his 
master  that  he  had  not  been  as  devoted  and  industrious 
as  his  fellow  servant.  He  had  taken  more  time  for  his 
own  pleasure,  had  not  worked  so  hard  nor  so  long,  had 
required  more  frequent  holidays  and  shorter  hours  of 
labor.  His  reward  of  five  cities  is  exactly  proportioned 
to  his  achievement;  and  he  enters  upon  his  new  term  of 
service  with  a  good  degree  of  outward  honor,  but  withr 
out  that  inspiration  and  joy  that  come  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  absolute  faithfulness. 

This  part  of  the  story  emphasizes  a  very  significant 
point  of  difference  between  human  judgment  and  the 
divine,  between  the  popular  estimate  of  service  and  the 
true  estimate  of  conscience.  We  ask.  What  has  a  man 
done?  And  if  he  has  gained  five  hundred  or  a  thousand 
per  cent  on  his  original  investment  of  education  or  talent 
or  money,  we  praise  him  unstintedly.  But  God  asks,  not, 
What  has  he  gained?  but.  How  faithful  has  he  been? 
Has  he  gained  all  that  he  might  Tiave  "gained  ?  Has  he 
used  his  gifts  to  the  utmost?  Not  accumulation  but 
activity,  not  display  but  devotion,  is  the  divine  measure 
of  merit. 

But  here  comes  the  third  man.  His  report  is  prac- 
tically identical  with  that  of  the  third  man  in  the  para- 
ble of  The  Talents.  "Lord,  behold,  here  is  thy  pound, 
which  I  have  kept  laid  up  in  a  napkin."  Then  follows 
the  excuse,  'T  knew  thee  that  thou  art  an  hard  man,"  etc. 
Why  an  excuse  at  all?  The  master  has  not  spoken  a 
word  of  blame.  He  has  not  questioned  the  servant's 
faithfulness.       But  conscience  has   been    speaking    all 

197 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

along.  In  this  man's  heart  has  been  sounding  the  words 
that  the  king  is  about  to  utter,  "T'hou  wicked  servant!" 
Again  and  again  he  has  felt  the  call  of  duty,  "Thou 
oughtest  to  have  put  my  money  into  the  bank  that  it 
might  have  been  accumulating  interest."  The  servant 
knew  what  he  ought  to  do ;  but  he  deliberately  chose  idle- 
ness with  the  disapproval  of  conscience.  The  inevitable 
result  follows — the  loss  of  his  pound.  His  master  had 
only  required  of  him  what  his  conscience  told  him  he 
could  fulfil.  He  neglected  what  he  himself  recognized 
as  his  simple  duty,  and  now  the  power  to  do  is  taken 
from  him. 

Again  it  is  the  universal  law :  you  must  use  or  lose. 
The  worst  feature  of  both  condemnation  and  judgment 
lies  in  the  fact  that  they  are  in  perfect  accord  with  the 
declarations  of  conscience.  Every  man  whom  God  con- 
demns is  first  self-condemned.  The  divine  judgment  is 
invariably  preceded  by  a  human  excuse. 

A  fourth  class  of  persons  appears  in  this  parable  that 
is  not  found  in  the  parable  of  The  Talents.  This  class 
is  represented  by  citizens  hostile  to  the  king,  who  oppose 
his  elevation  to  the  throne  and  are  put  to  death  upon  his 
return.  The  act  of  the  king  is  that  of  a  vindictive 
tyrant.  In  that  it  does  not  truthfully  represent  the 
character  of  God  nor  the  spirit  of  his  dealings  with 
men;  nevertheless  this  part  of  the  story  serves  to  illus- 
trate a  great  truth.  Resistance  to  divine  law  always 
means  disaster  or  destruction.  You  cannot  defy  a  law 
of  nature  without  inviting  physical  destruction.  Equal- 
ly true  is  it  that  spiritual  disaster  follows  surely  upon  any 
neglect  or  defiance  of  God's  spiritual  laws.  A  man  casts 
himself  from  some  lofty  eminence,  defying  the  law  of 
gravitation,  and  he  is  dashed  to  pieces  as  he  strikes  the 
rocks  below.  No  less  sure  is  the  moral  destruction  of  a 
Burr  or  an  Arnold  who  hurls  himself  from  the  pin- 
nacle of  honor  in  defiance  of  the  laws  of  righteousness. 

To  bring  out  this  truth  is  not,  however,  the  primary 

198 


THE POUNDS 

reason  for  the  introduction  of  the  hostile  citizens.  Its 
more  immediate  purpose  is  to  complete  the  outline  of 
possible  attitudes  towards  God,  and  to  make  more  clear 
the  precise  position  of  the  three  servants.  In  the  con- 
trast between  citizens  and  servants  we  have  a  suggested 
distinction  between  disciples  and  those  who  do  not  ac- 
knowledge any  allegiance  to  Christ.  The  three  servants 
stand  for  three  classes  of  Christians,  three  distinct  planes 
of  spiritual  living. 

All  Christians  are  not  alike.  There  are  Christians 
and  Christians.  One  Christian  differs  from  another 
Christian  not  alone  in  glory  but  also  in  character  and 
blessing.  Salvation  is  a  great  thing  or  a  little  thing  ac- 
cording to  our  attitude  toward  it.  As  the  gospel  comes 
to  us  from  Christ  it  is  absolutely  the  same  for  all.  All 
have  the  same  promises,  the  same  privileges.  The  new 
birth,  the  baptism  of  the  Spirit,  and  all  the  progressive 
experiences  of  the  Christian  life  are  offered  in  exactly 
equal  measure  to  each  individual  disciple ;  but  the  act- 
ual revelations  of  joy  and  peace  and  spiritual  power  vary 
indefinitely. 

Whence  comes  this  difference?  Whv  do  we  see  one 
Christian  developing  a  saintly  character,  living  a  happy 
Christian  life,  entering  into  the  higher  experiences  of 
discipleship,  and  winning  many  souls  for  the  Master, 
while  his  neighbor  makes  little  or  no  progress,  finds  no 
delight  but  only  hardship  in  his  service,  reaps  little  fruit 
from  his  labor?  It  is  solely  a  question  of  faithfulness. 
Here  is  a  man  whose  pound  has  gained  ten  pounds. 
He  is  busy  and  hard  at  work,  but  he  is  happy  in  the 
midst  of  his  toil  and  sacrifice  because  he  has  the  con- 
tinual approval  of  conscience.  He  knows  that  he  is 
perfectly  faithful ;  he  cannot  help  knowing  it.  There  are 
others  who  make  considerable  progress  and  are  fairly 
busy  in  the  kingdom,  yes,  who  manifest  a  growing  saint- 
hood and  not  a  little  achievement;  yet  they  fail  of  com- 

199 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

plete  satisfaction  because  they  have  not  the  witness  of 
conscience  that  they  are  doing  their  full  duty. 

Yet  others  there  are  who  have  enlisted  in  the  service  of 
the  King.     They  are  known  to  the  world  as  Christians. 
They  are  members  of  the  Church.     They  cherish  a  fond 
hope  of  salvation.     But  they  are  making  no  use  what- 
I    ever  of  the  gifts  and  promises  of  God.     The  riches  of 
/    the  gospel  they  allow  to  remain  shut  up  within  the  covers 
/     of  a  book  which  is  to  them  so  sacred  that  they  rarely 
open  it.     All  their  time,  their  energy,  their  thought,  their 
ambition,  are  devoted  to  themselves.  To  them  God  ap- 
pears as  a  hard  Master  requiring  the  impossible  of  men, 
and  demanding  the  sacrifice  of  the  best  things  now  in  re- 
"\  turn  for  doubtful  blessings  hereafter.     They  are  full  of 
I  apologies  and  excuses.     You  never  meet  them  but  they 
have  a  word  of  explanation  to  offer  for  some  failure  in 
service  or  duty.     What  wonder  if  they   soon  lose  the 
hope  that  they  cherished  at  the  first?     What  wonder  if 
they  continually  sing  — 

"Where  is  the  blessedness  I  knew 
When  first  I  saw  the  Lord?" 

What  wonder  if  they  have  much  to  say  about  "crosses," 
and  little  about  new  experiences? 

So  this  parable  of  The  Pounds,  though  not  directly 
introduced  as  a  parable  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
proves  to  be  really  in  that  class.  It  is  a  picture  of  charac- 
ter building;  and  this  is  what  it  tells  us:  Character  is 
not  simply  good  or  bad,  Christly  or  unchristly.  There  are 
infinite  gradations  of  Christliness.  There  is  character 
that  results  from  making  the  most  of  one's  oppor- 
tunities, the  character  that  affords  the  supreme  satis- 
faction of  an  approving  conscience;  and  there  is  charac- 
ter that  is  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  Christlike  and  yet 
does  not  fill  up  the  measure  of  its  possibilities.  More 
than  this,  there  is  a  form  of  Christianity  that  contents 

200 


THE POUNDS 

itself  with  declaring  itself  on  the  side  of  Christ  and  then 
leaves  all  the  commands  and  promises  and  possibilities 
of  the  Christian  life  sealed  up  within  the  covers  of  the 
Bible — a  Christianity  that  will  lose  itself  at  the  last. 

It  is  not  enough,  then,  for  any  man  to  ask  and  to 
answer  the  question.  Am  I  among  the  servants  or  the 
enemies  of  the  King?  You  may  be  a  servant,  a  Chris- 
tian in  some  real  sense,  and  yet  fail  to  enjoy  all  that 
it  is  your  privilege  to  enjoy.  There  are  those  who  are 
saved,  "so  as  by  fire."  Or  you  may  be  perfectly  faith- 
ful, having  daily  the  witness  of  a  good  conscience,  and 
"so  an  entrance  shall  be  ministered  unto  you  abundantly 
into  the  everlasting  kingdom  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ." 

The  kingdom  of  God  will  never  "appear"  to  any  man, 
either  immediately  or  remotely.  It  is  a  spiritual  con- 
dition of  the  soul  within,  not  an  institution  either  ma- 
terial or  spiritual  to  be  entered  from  without.  Each 
one  must  realize  the  kingdom  in  his  own  soul  through  the 
use  of  whatever  opportunities  come  to  his  hand ;  and 
the  glory  and  gladness  of  that  realization  will  be  in  ex- 
act proportion  to  the  faithfulness  in  service.  The  es- 
sence of  the  kingdom  is  character,  the  perfection  of  the 
kingdom,  the  fulness  of  the  stature  of  Christ;  the  re- 
wards of  the  kingdom,  dominion  and  ever  increasing 
power  for  service. 


201 


The  Patchwork 


CHAPTER  XVI 

The  Patchwork 

THE   NEW   CLOTH   IN   THE  OLD  GARMENT 
Matt.  9:16;   Mark  2^21;  Luke  5:36 

Text. — '*No  man  rendeth  a  piece  from  a  nenu  garment  and  putUth  it 
upon  an  old  garment.  " — Luke  5:36 

AMENDED  coat  is  not  the  true  symbol  of  a 
Christian  character.  That  is  a  new  and 
perfect  garment.  The  rehgion  of  the  gos- 
pel is  not  a  patch  put  upon  the  old  life  to 
cover  or  conceal  its  defects.  It  is  a  new 
life  wrought  out  of  new  materials,  and  woven  in  a 
fashion  wholly  new.  It  is  a  seamless  robe  without  spot 
or  defect  of  any  kind.  Its  motives  and  principles,  its 
forms  and  expressions,  are  fresh  and  unique.  They  are 
not  borrowed  from  other  sources;  they  are  not  copied 
from  other  teachers.  The  acceptance  of  the  Christ  life 
involves  the  rejection  of  the  old  life  with  all  its  traditions 
and  ideals.  Any  attempt  to  wed  the  old  and  the  new, 
any  scheme  of  compromise  between  them,  can  only  re- 
sult in  the  stultification  of  both.  This,  in  brief,  is  the 
truth  that  Jesus  would  teach  us  in  The  Parable  of  the 
Patchwork. 

A  question  of  the  scribes  has  revealed  one  of  -many 
false  notions  regarding  our  Lord's  mission.  "Why  do 
the  disciples  of  John  fast  often,  .  .  .  and  likewise 
the  disciples  of  the  Pharisees ;  but  thine  eat  and 
drink?"  they  ask;  for  as  yet  they  suppose  his  teachings 
to  be  only  an  amended  Judaism,  a  sort  of  appendix  de- 

205 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

signed  to  supplement  and  correct  the  errors  of  their  own 
teaching.  At  most  it  is  but  a  nev/  and  revised  edition  of 
the  preachings  of  John  the  Baptist.  Jesus  therefore 
plainly  declares  to  them  that  he  has  not  come  to  patch  up 
old  failures  and  to  mend  old  and  worn-out  systems.  Not 
even  to  improve  and  make  perfect  that  which  is  fairly 
good  in  itself,  is  his  purpose ;  but  to  make  all  things  new. 

The  unique  character  of  the  Christian  life,  its  abso- 
lute newness  and  independence  of  all  other  religious 
ideals,  that  is  the  thought  Jesus  would  emphasize.  And 
he  has  put  it  in  a  form  at  once  unmistakable  and  sug- 
gestive. 

He  had  taught  the  same  truth  by  implication  many 
times  before.  Again  and  again  he  had  avoided  the  old 
issues  and  endeavored  to  show  his  hearers  that  the  new 
alone  was  vital.  To  Nicodemus,  eager  to  discuss  the 
credentials  of  Messiahship,  he  propounds  the  doctrine  of 
the  New  Birth.  To  the  woman  of  Samaria,  mulling 
over  the  threadbare  question  of  the  proper  place 
for  worship,  he  declares  that  place  is  nothing  but  spirit 
is  everything.  To  the  bigoted  religionists,  pottering  over 
questions  of  divine  prerogative,  he  flings  out  the  chal- 
lenge of  divine  power,  and  eclipses  the  accusation  of 
blasphemy  by  a  manifestation  of  blessing. 

Now  he  teaches  them  directly  and  in  terms  that  are 
unequivocal.  The  old  religion  had  its  fixed  terms  for 
fasting  and  the  like.  They  suppose  that  the  new  will 
be  even  more  rigorous,  continuing  the  austerities  of  the 
old  and  adding  to  them.  For  to  their  minds  religion  is 
essentially  a  matter  of  outward  forms,  a  question  of  do- 
ing and  abstaining.  Jesus  declares  that  whatever  may 
be  the  forms  and  exercises  of  the  new  religion,  they  will 
not  be  in  any  sense  a  continuance  of  the  old.  Will  his 
disciples  fast?  Doubtless  they  will.  That  seems  to  be 
taken  for  granted  in  his  great  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
But  their  fasting  will  be  essentially  different  from  that  of 
the  Pharisees.     It  will  not  be  a  relic  of  Jev/ish  cere- 

2oe 


THE  NEW  CLOTH  in  the  OLD  GARMENT 

monialism  or  of  the  asceticism  of  John.  These  at  their 
best  were  more  or  less  mechanical.  They  were  exer- 
cises or  privations  undertaken  as  in  some  way  meritori- 
ous, and  constituting  an  end  in  themselves.  If  there  be 
fasting  among  his  disciples,  it  will  be  the  spontaneous  ex- 
hibition of  the  new  life,  and  so  will  reveal  a  new  meaning. 
It  will  not  be  a  premeditated  act  of  penance  or  purga- 
tion. Rather  will  it  come  through  the  natural  preoccu- 
pation of  an  eager  soul  intent  upon  some  noble  purpose 
that  for  the  time  eclipses  physical  needs.  The  new  doc- 
trine is  not  to  be  grafted  upon  the  old  stock ;  its  forms  of 
expression,  though  similar  to  those  already  in  vogue,  are 
never  identical  with  them.  Every  word  is  charged  with 
new  meaning.  Every  custom  and  method  is  made  a 
channel  of  fresh  power. 

The  question  of  the  scribes  and  of  John's  disciples  is 
a  perennial  question  and  calls  for  a  perennial  answer. 
The  ground  of  questioning  may  shift,  has  shifted  indefi- 
nitely. It  may  swing  all  the  way  around  the  circle  from 
asceticism  to  self-indulgence,  but  it  is  the  same  old  ques- 
tion still,  and  it  is  not  at  all  a  question  of  mere  feasting  or 
fasting,  but  of  conformity.  Very  often,  as  originally,  it 
is  a  question  of  conformity  to  the  accepted  religious  ideals 
and  standards  of  the  past.  Why  do  not  the  disciples  of 
to-day  think  and  act  and  live  precisely  as  did  the  disci- 
ples of  the  last  generation  or  of  the  preceding  century? 
In  contrast  with  this,  yet  inspired  by  the  same  spirit,  is 
the  question  of  conformity  to  the  standards  of  the  un- 
christian world.  Why  does  not  the  Christian  conform  his 
life  exactly  to  the  life  of  men  about  him  excepting  only 
in  matters  of  religious  duty? 

If  a  disciple  to-day  ventures  to  seek  a  new  and  higher 
religious  experience,  if  he  refuses  to  conform  his  action 
and  aims  to  the  popular  religious  ideals  of  the  unchris- 
tian world,  or  if  he  rejects  as  worn  out  the  spiritual 
standards  of  the  past  generation,  the  creeds  and  for  ns 
of  the  fathers,  it  causes  no  less  surprise  than  did  a  simi- 

207 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

lar  course  of  action  in  our  Lord's  time.  Witness  the  in- 
finite pains  that  men,  even  good  and  earnest  Christian 
men,  have  taken  to  anchor  the  hfe  and  thought  of  the 
Christian  Church  to  certain  fixed  expressions  of  beHei 
and  forms  of  service.  Witness,  too,  the  insistence  with 
which  unspiritual  disciples  applaud  the  conventional  and 
denounce  the  unusual  in  religious  activity  or  worship,  so 
making  true  the  saying  of  Lowell,  "In  prosperous  times 
the  faith  of  one  generation  becomes  the  formality  of  the 
next."  "The  dead  hand"  has  ever  been  and  still  contin- 
ues to  be  a  serious  hindrance  to  the  spiritual  progress 
of  the  Christian  Church.  It  is  the  petrified  incarnation 
of  the  old  question  of  the  Pharisees.  The  world  has  not 
yet  begun  to  realize  with  any  adequate  degree  of  clear- 
ness the  fact  that  Christianity  is  a  living  religion,  essen- 
tially new  in  every  age  and  in  every  soul,  and  that  it 
must  continually  find  for  itself  new  methods  and  chan- 
nels of  expression  or  it  will  perish. 

This  questioning  and  surprise,  this  inability  to  com- 
prehend the  rejection  of  the  old  and  the  revelation  of 
the  new,  springs  from  what  we  may  fitly  call  the  "Patch- 
work Theory"  of  Christianity.  It  grows  out  of  the  no- 
tion that  the  Christian  life  is  simply  a  scheme  for  mend- 
ing a  broken  law,  for  patching  rents  in  human  charac- 
ter, for  making  up  by  extra  goodness  or  merit  in  one 
sphere  the  deficiencies  of  all  other  parts  of  life.  It  is 
the  natural  fruit  of  the  idea  that  religion  is  a  compro- 
mise with  evil  instead  of  the  conquest  of  evil. 

And  this  patchwork  theory  has  always  found  a  place 
in  the  thinking  of  religious  men.  It  is  one  of  the  per- 
sistent theories  of  religion,  cropping  out  in  every  age  and 
land  and  constantly  getting  itself  mistaken  for  divine 
revelation.  Again  and  again  it  has  appeared  in  the  his- 
tory of  Christianity,  and  always  with  the  same  results. 

You  know  the  story  of  the  first  great  compromise  of 
Christianity  with  the  power  and  spirit  of  the  world. 
Eager   to   hasten   the   redemption   of   the   empire,   the 

208 


THE  NEW  CLOTH  in  the  OLD  GARMENT 

Church  of  Jesus  Christ  entered  into  an  entangling  alli- 
ance with  the  national  life  of  Rome,  became  the  state  re- 
ligion, accepted  the  protection  of  the  civil  power,  per- 
mitted itself  to  become  a  mere  limited  and  partial  addi- 
tion of  new  life  and  thought  upon  the  worn  and  tat- 
tered surface  of  the  old  heathenism.  You  know,  too,  the 
effect  of  this  compromise.  The  last  state  of  the  Roman 
empire  was  worse  than  the  first.  The  old  heathenism 
scarcely  felt  the  influence  of  the  new  religion,  while 
Christianity  was  rapidly  paganized  by  the  customs  and 
principles  to  which  she  was  forced  to  give  way.  Soon 
the  worst  cruelties  of  a  pagan  Nero  were  outdone  by 
the  barbarities  that  were  perpetrated  in  the  name  of 
Christ,  and  the  shrunken  patch  of  the  new  religion  made 
unspeakably  greater  and  more  ghastly  the  rents  in  the 
old  heathenism. 

You  are  familiar  also  with  the  story  of  the  bald  and 
blasphemous  proclamation  of  this  theory  in  the  days  of 
Martin  Luther,  when  every  priest  became  a  peddler  of 
"indulgences,"  which  simply  means  that  he  offered  for 
sale  at  fixed  prices  patches  of  ecclesiastical  grace  of  sizes 
adapted  to  cover  all  manner  of  moral  defects  and  spiri- 
tual rents  in  the  human  life.  Is  it  strange  that  under 
such  a  system  the  spirituality  of  the  Church  became 
shrunken,  that  the  moral  life  of  the  people  sank  rapidly 
to  the  lowest  level,  and  that  the  very  ministers  of  relig- 
ion were  leaders  in  vice  and  crime,  until  at  length  the 
riddled  garment  of  Romanism  was  rent  in  twain  by  the 
spirit  of  the  great  Reformation? 

The  outcome  is  sure.  With  unvarying  monotony,  the 
witness  of  history  confirms  our  Lord's  declaration,  "The 
new  piece  that  filleth  it  up  taketh  away  from  the  old, 
and  the  rent  is  made  worse."  Either  the  new  spiritual 
life  destroys  the  old  forms  or  it  is  itself  destroyed  in  the 
effort  for  adjustment  and  conformity. 

Nevertheless,  this  patchwork  theory  of  religion  has  by 
no  means  passed  away.    It  reveals  itself  in  the  Chris- 

209 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

tian  thinking  of  our  own  day,  and  hampers  the  spiritual 
growth  of  disciples  as  seriously  as  ever  it  did.  We  may 
detect  its  presence  in  at  least  two  forms.  First,  there 
are  those  who  still  look  upon  Christianity  as  a  patch 
inserted  to  fill  up  life's  incompleteness.  And  second, 
there  are  those  who  think  of  the  religion  of  the  gospel 
as  a  patch  to  cover  life's  imperfections. 

First,  I  say,  there  are  those,  and  they  are  by  no  means 
few,  whose  ideal  of  Christianity  is  that  it  is  a  patch  to 
fill  up  life's  incompleteness.  Life  is  considered  as  a  com- 
plex whole  made  up  of  various  elements.  The  physical, 
the  intellectual  and  the  spiritual  are  so  many  depart- 
ments of  the  whole  which  constitutes  human  life,  and 
each  must  be  developed  in  due  proportion  if  the  man- 
hood is  to  be  complete.  Holding  this  theory,  a  man  is 
apt  to  draw  the  lines  very  sharply  between  the  religious 
and  the  secular  in  his  life,  and  to  see  to  it  that  the  one 
shall  not  trespass  upon  the  sphere  of  the  other.  Busi- 
ness is  business  and  is  conducted  on  strictly  business 
principles,  that  is,  upon  the  principles  that  unchristian 
men  follow  in  business.  Politics,  too,  and  recreation  are 
outside  the  sphere  of  religion  and  it  must  not  be  al- 
lowed to  control  them.  Religion  is  necessary  because 
man  has  a  spiritual  nature  that  must  be  nourished  and 
developed,  but  it  is  one  among  many,  and  must  keep  to 
its  own  place.  So  the  man  is  regular  in  attendance  at 
church,  he  may  even  be  zealous  in  prayer-meeting,  but 
these  things  are  kept  strictly  apart  from  the  rest  of  his 
life.  In  church  work  and  its  collaterals  he  is  animated 
by  the  spirit  of  love  and  self-sacrifice.  His  great  desire 
is  the  salvation  of  his  fellow  men.  He  is  benevolent, 
kind-hearted,  unselfish.  But  when  he  goes  forth  from 
the  church  into  business  or  society  or  politics  he  is  ani- 
mated by  the  spirit  of  competition  or  of  self-seeking  am- 
bition. Thus  it  frequently  happens  that  men  who  are 
held  up  by  the  church  as  exemplary  Christians,  and  are 
lauded  for  their  ardent  piety  and  overflowing  benevo- 

210 


THE  NEW  CLOTH  in  the  OLD  GARMENT 

lence,  are  utterly  unscrupulous  and  heartless  in  their 
business  relations  and  enterprises.  Even  churches  them- 
selves often  belie  their  preaching  by  the  methods  and 
spirit  revealed  in  the  transaction  of  their  business  af- 
fairs. 

What  wonder  that  under  such  circumstances  the  patch 
of  piety  continually  shrinks  till  at  length  it  tears  itself 
wholly  away  and  leaves  in  life  a  larger  rent  than  was 
there  at  the  first!  What  wonder  if  the  church  that 
preaches  such  a  doctrine  is  shrinking  till  it  threatens  to 
leave  society  as  a  whole  with  only  a  large  rent  where 
it  was ! 

Again,  there  are  those  who  look  upon  Christianity  as 
a  patch  designed  to  cover  the  imperfections  of  the  life 
and  to  conceal  its  defects  from  the  eyes  of  divine  wrath. 
They  are  the  disciples  who  delight  to  preach  and  to  be- 
lieve some  doctrine  of  the  atonement  that  substitutes  the 
righteousness  of  Jesus  for  their  own  righteousness, 
which  is  lacking.  They  sing,  "Jesus  paid  it  all,"  and 
then  settle  down  to  lives  of  contented  slavery  to  sin, 
fondly  imagining  that  that  daily  repentance  covers  all 
the  evil  doings  of  the  day  with  a  patch  of  divine  for- 
giveness that  makes  the  garment  as  good  as  whole  again. 

Said  a  very  orthodox  but  very  irascible  deacon  to  a 
young  preacher  after  a  sermon  on  holiness,  'T  do  not 
trust  for  salvation  to  any  righteousness  in  my  life,  but 
to  the  fact  that  I  always  repent  of  any  sin  that  I  commit 
and  pray  for  forgiveness.  Why,  I  never  beat  my  horse 
but  I  am  sorry  for  it  afterwards."  "My  friend,"  re- 
plied the  preacher,  "if  your  sorrow  doesn't  make  you  quit 
beating  your  horse,  it  will  not  save  you  from  perdition." 

And  who  will  say  that  there  are  not  many  disciples  of 
whom  that  deacon  is  a  fair  type?  They  see  the  rents  in 
their  own  characters,  but  hope  to  so  conceal  them  with 
patches  of  repentance,  or  what  not,  that  God  shall  not 
see  them.  Such  souls  make  no  spiritual  progress.  They 
do  not  grow  in  grace.     They  are  not  sanctified.    How 

211 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

can  they  be?  They  neither  feel  the  necessity  nor  un- 
derstand the  possibility  of  sanctification. 

No  soul  was  ever  saved  by  such  a  doctrine  as  that. 
The  millennium  could  not  be  brought  to  pass  in  a  mil- 
lion eternities  by  it.  The  only  tendency  of  such  a  view 
of  religion  is  to  make  the  life  worse  and  worse.  As  be- 
fore, the  patch  that  seemed  so  sufficient  when  applied, 
shrinks  day  by  day  until  at  length  it  is  wholly  lost  out 
of  the  life.  He  who  trusts  for  his  salvation  to  the  im- 
puted righteousness  of  Christ,  who  imagines  that  his 
own  unrighteousness  is  to  be  concealed  at  the  Judgment 
Day  by  the  borrowed  robe  of  Christ's  righteousness,  will 
eventually  lose  all  interest  in  righteousness  of  any  kind. 
Christly  character  cannot  be  built  up  on  subterfuges  of 
any  kind,  however  pious,  or  on  shams,  however  widely 
approved. 

Against  this  notion  of  a  rent  and  patched  life  the 
Christ  of  to-day  is  protesting  with  many  voices.  In 
opposition  to  the  theory  that  divides  life  into  many  and 
diverse  elements  the  spiritual  unity  of  life  is  being  pro- 
claimed with  an  insistence  hitherto  unknown.  We  are 
being  brought  face  to  face  with  the  truth  that  one  mo- 
tive, one  principle,  one  law  must  govern  the  life  in  every 
part,  that  religion  is  not  a  separable  element  or  depart- 
ment of  life,  but  that  it  is  the  very  essence  of  life  in  all 
its  departments,  that  it  is  the  motive,  the  principle,  the 
law  by  which  the  whole  life  must  be  governed  and  from 
which  the  whole  must  take  its  character  and  tone.  We 
cannot  long  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  prophets  who  are 
telling  us  in  the  Word  of  God  that  the  same  spirit  of 
self-sacrifice  which  we  believe  should  control  in  our  re- 
ligious and  benevolent  work  is  also  the  true  spirit  for 
business  or  politics  or  society.  Either  we  must  permit 
the  life  to  be  made  wholly  new  with  the  spirit  of  Christ 
for  its  warp,  or  we  shall  lose  our  Christianity  altogether, 
and  what  is  left  of  the  old  life  will  be  sadly  disfigured. 

Again,  the  Christ  of  to-day  demands  that  all  notions 

212 


THE  NEW  CLOTH  in  the  OLD  GARMENT 

of  imputed  character  be  done  away  as  dishonest  in  them- 
selves and  dishonoring  to  God.  The  only  righteousness 
that  the  moral  intelligence  of  this  age  can  recognize  is 
real  righteousness.  It  finds  the  significance  of  gospel 
salvation,  not  in  the  judicial  pardon  of  sin  on  the  ground 
of  an  artificial  and  false  judgment,  nor  in  the  escape  of 
the  guilty  one  from  the  penalty  of  his  sin,  but  in  a  real 
and  essential  victory  over  sin,  in  the  escape  through 
victory  from  its  power  and  pollution.  The  spirit  of  the 
times  calls  for  a  religion  that  shall  actually  make  life 
purer,  less  selfish,  more  kindly,  that  shall  transform  and 
transfigure  society,  that  shall  enter  into  all  human  life 
and  shall  bring  it  into  growing  conformity  to  the  life 
of  God, 

The  religion  of  doctrines  and  theories  does  not  appeal 
to  burdened  and  thoughtful  men,  and  they  naturally  turn 
away  from  its  outward  manifestation  in  the  Church. 
The  old  judicial  view  of  sin  and  salvation,  too,  is  fast 
passing  away,  and  in  place  of  this  marvelous  structure 
of  scholasticism  and  theology  is  rising  the  natural  view 
of  sin  as  an  actual  fact,  a  force  working  ruin  here  and 
now  by  natural  processes,  and  calling  for  some  real 
power,  religious  or  other,  that  shall  heal  the  disease  and 
remove  the  difficulty.  Unless  Christianity  proves  its  di- 
vine efficiency  in  accomplishing  this  cure,  it  must  pay 
the  penalty  of  its  weakness  in  gradual  but  certain  dis- 
integration. 

All  this,  however,  is  remote  and  general.  Let  us  turn 
for  a  few  moments  to  that  which  is  more  direct  and 
personal.  The  parable  finds  its  vital  application  to 
every  individual  life.  It  utters  to  each  one  of  us  its 
challenge,  What  is  your  ideal  of  religion?  Is  it  a 
patch?  Is  it  a  partial,  shrunken  thing?  Do  you  think 
of  religion  as  merely  a  section  of  your  life,  to  be  kept 
quite  apart  from  the  rest?  Do  you  trust  in  it  as  a  cover 
for  your  shortcomings  in  the  home,  in  business,  in 
society,  and  in  the  countless  other  relations  of  life?    Do 

213 


THEi     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

you  hope  by  religious  zeal  and  churchly  activity  to  con- 
ceal dishonesty  or  greed  or  impurity  or  unkindness  from 
the  eye  of  God,  so  that  you  shall  appear  before  the  judg- 
ment seat  as  holy  when  in  fact  your  life  has  been  very 
unholy  ? 

Oh,  listen  to  the  message  of  the  Christ  as  it  comes  to 
you  through  this  parable!  The  Christian  life  is  not  a 
mere  compromise  with  the  old  life  of  sin.  It  is  not  a 
little  of  the  new  on  the  surface  while  a  great  deal  of 
the  old  remains  underneath,  as  wretched  and  as  imper- 
fect as  ever.  It  is  not  a  poor,  mended,  unsightly  cloak, 
to  be  thrown  over  the  life.  It  is  a  new  life,  wholly  nev/, 
a  complete  life,  a  life  wholly  distinct  from  the  old.  It 
is  a  life  that  grows  more  and  more  into  harmony  with 
the  divine  life  of  God. 

Listen  to  the  same  message  as  it  is  interpreted  by  St. 
Paul.  "If  any  man  be  in  Christ" — what?  "old  things 
shall  be  mended  and  patched"?  "old  things  shall  be 
somewhat  improved"? — No!  no!  "If  any  man  be  in 
Christ,  he  is  a  new  creature:  old  things  are  passed 
away;  behold,  all  things  are  become  new." 


214 


The  Expansive  Force  of 
Living  Experience 


CHAPTER  XVII 

The  Expansive  Force  of 
Living  Experience 

THE    NEW    WINE    IN    OLD    BOTTLES 

Matt.  9:17;  Mark  2:22;  Luke  5:37,38 

Text. — "No  man putteth  nenju  nvine  into  old  bottles.  " — Luke  5:37 

LIFE  implies  variety,  progress.  Monotony  is 
lifelessness.  The  lifeless  creations  of  man 
inevitably  bear  the  trade-mark  of  monotony. 
He  makes  a  coin,  and  then  from  the  same 
die  turns  out  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
other  coins  that  are  identical  with  the  first  in  every  re- 
spect. He  makes  a  watch,  and  of  myriads  sent  out  from 
the  same  factory  no  man  can  distinguish  one  from  an- 
other unless  by  means  of  the  number  stamped  upon  it. 
Even  the  brain  creations  of  the  dreamers,  the  thinkers, 
the  artists,  with  all  their  freshness  and  originality,  re- 
veal a  certain  underlying  sameness  which  we  call  style. 
The  style  of  an  author,  the  school  of  an  artist,  what  is 
either  but  the  monotony  that  tinges  and  limits  the  variety 
of  his  work?  For  man  does  not  possess  the  power  of 
infinite  variation;  he  has  not  discovered  the  secret  of 
life. 

How  diflferent  is  it  with  the  living  creations  of  Godl 
Who  would  ever  speak  or  even  think  of  the  style  of  a 
divine  creation?  There  is  infinite  variety  without  a  hint 
of  repetition  or  limitation.  Among  all  the  countless  mil- 
lions of  the  human  race,  no  two  faces  can  be  found  that 
are  absolutely  identical;  how  much  less  two  entire  per- 

217 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

sonalities.  In  the  vegetable  world  every  tree  and  plant, 
yes  and  every  minutest  leaf  or  twig  has  its  distinct  in- 
dividuality. No  two  smallest  flowers  alike,  no  two  com- 
monest blades  of  grass  precisely  the  same.  Each  em- 
bodiment of  life  is  a  fresh  creation,  absolutely  new  and 
unique. 

As  men  differ  in  face  or  form,  so  also  do  they  differ 
in  mind,  feeling,  disposition,  temperament.  Never  in 
the  history  of  tiie  race  have  there  been  two  identical  souls  ; 
never  two  mental  or  spiritual  experiences  that  were  exact 
duplicates  the  one  of  the  other;  for  these,  too,  are  the 
living  creations  of  God  and  partake  of  his  infinite  na- 
ture. The  life  that  has  entered  into  fellowship  with  the 
divine  cannot  but  be  progressive  and  ever  new. 

This  is  the  point  at  issue  between  two  antagonistic 
views  of  religion.  The  one  regards  religion  as  a  human 
invention,  a  lifeless  system  of  service,  and  consequently 
to  be  cast  in  certain  rigid  molds  of  form  and  ceremony. 
The  other  sees  religion  as  a  divine  creation,  pulsating 
with  an  ever  new  and  growing  life  that  cannot  be  re- 
strained within  fixed  bounds  or  limited  by  hard  and  fast 
rules  of  conduct.  In  the  one  view  religion  is  a  me- 
chanical fulfilment  of  prescribed  rites ;  in  the  other,  it 
is  "the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man."  The  history  of 
religion  among  men  is  a  history  of  the  struggle  between 
these  two  ideals,  and  all  religious  progress  results  from 
the  triumph  of  the  divine  and  the  living  over  the  human 
and  the  formal. 

This,  also,  is  one  of  the  points  involved  in  the  question 
with  which  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  and  the  disciples  of 
John  challenge  Jesus.  "Why  do  the  disciples  of  John 
fast  often,  and  make  prayers,  and  likewise  the  disciples 
of  the  Pharisees;  but  thine  eat  and  drink?"  To  the 
minds  of  his  questioners  religion  is  chiefly  a  matter  of 
forms  and  ceremonies,  of  fastings  and  prayers ;  and  they 
expect  that  Christianity  will  be  only  a  new  coin  pressed 
out  from  the  old  die.     Possibly  it  may  reveal  some  new 

218 


THE  NEW  WINE  IN  OLD  BOTTLES 

elements ;  but  surely  it  will  be  in  essence  and  in  externals 
for  the  most  part  like  that  which  they  have  already 
known.  If  there  be  anything  new  in  its  spirit  and  teach- 
ing, surely  these  will  be  embodied  in  the  old  symbols, 
they  will  express  themselves  through  the  familiar  chan- 
nels. 

To  this  element  of  the  question,  Jesus  replies,  "No  man 
putteth  new  wine  into  old  bottles ;  else  the  new  wine  will 
burst  the  bottles,  and  be  spilled,  and  the  bottles  shall 
perish.  But  new  wine  must  be  put  into  new  bottles ;  and 
both  are  preserved," 

To  those  who  heard  him,  the  meaning  of  the  parable 
or  simile  would  be  perfectly  clear.  The  old  bottles,  or 
wine-skins,  dry,  hard,  easily  cracked,  and  containing  the 
seeds  of  fermentation  which  would  set  free  the  very 
force  that  should  burst  them,  well  represents  the  lifeless 
and  rigid  forms  of  the  old  religion.  The  new  wine,  fresh 
from  the  grapes  and  filled  with  the  mysterious  life  of  the 
vine,  is  a  fitting  type  of  a  living,  enthusiastic^  expanding 
Christian  experience.  Just  as  surely  as  the  new  wine 
with  the  expansive  force  of  its  fermentation  would  break 
the  dried  and  lifeless  skins,  so  surely  would  the  growing 
life  of  the  new  religion  refuse  to  be  confined  within  the 
rigid  but  feeble  mold  of  the  ancient  forms ;  and  if  the 
attempt  were  made  to  repress  it,  the  priceless  spiritual 
energy  would  break  its  prison  and  run  to  waste.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  new  wine-skins^  strong,  elastic,  pliable, 
stand  for  the  new  forms,  the  spontaneous  service  in  which 
the  fresh  spiritual  life  may  work  freely  and  fully,  thus 
attaining  the  ripeness  of  Christian  experience  and  giving 
true  performance  to  Christian  service. 

Briefly,  then,  the  thought  of  the  parable  is  this: — 
Every  genuine  religious  life  is  essentially  a  new  creation. 
True  Christianity  is  a  living,  expanding,  overflowing 
energy.  It  cannot  be  reduced  to  fixed  forms  and  ex- 
pressed in  set  phrases,  but  continually  demands  new 
channels  of  action  and  fresh  modes  of  expression.  Every 

219 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

great  revival  that  has  swept  over  the  Christian  Church 
has  been  marked  by  phenomena  pecuHar  to  itself  and  un- 
like those  manifested  in  previous  awakenings.  The  tide 
of  uprising  spiritual  life  has  cut  a  new  channel  for  it- 
self as  it  has  flowed  onward,  and  only  as  men  have  been 
willing  to  accept  this  new  channel  has  the  blessing  poured 
into  their  lives.  The  effort  to  embody  this  living  spiri- 
tual force  in  the  rigid  limitations  of  a  decadent  formal- 
ism has  always  resulted  in  disaster  to  the  forms  and  in 
waste  of  spiritual  power. 

"No  man  putteth  new  wine  into  old  bottles."  True 
enough.  A  single  experiment  of  this  kind  in  what  we 
term  "the  natural  world,"  is  sufficient  to  convince  men  of 
the  folly  of  it,  and  ever  afterwards  they  act  more  wisely. 
But  in  the  spiritual  world  our  wits  work  more  slowly, 
proving  again  and  again  the  truth  of  our  Lord's  saying, 
"The  children  of  this  world  are  in  their  generation  wiser 
than  the  children  of  light."  The  religionists  of  every  age 
seem  to  be  possessed  of  a  mania  for  saving  the  old  bot- 
tles of  phrase  and  form  and  trying  to  force  into  them 
the  new  wine  of  the  ever  growing  spiritual  life.  Accord- 
ing to  the  persistent  notion,  the  wine  is  made  for  the  bot- 
tle, not  the  bottle  for  the  wine.  The  lifeless  form  is  magni- 
fied till  it  seems  more  important  than  the  spiritual  life ; 
and  it  is  really  astonishing  with  what  tenderness  we 
cling  to  some  of  these  empty  and  worthless  bottles  long 
after  the  last  drop  of  spiritual  wine  has  flowed  from  their 
gaping  seams. 

There  are  to-day  in  the  Christian  Church  enough  of 
these  old  bottles  to  stock  a  spiritual  apothecary's  shop, 
and  not  a  few  eager  but  belated  saints  are  diligently  try- 
ing to  bottle  up  in  them  the  effervescent  spiritual  life  of 
the  unfolding  twentieth  century.  Look  at  them  all  neatly 
arranged  on  the  churchly  shelves  and  labeled  with  the 
neatest  of  churchly  labels — old  bottles  of  thought,  old 
bottles  of  action,  old  bottles  of  expression. 

There  on  the  upper  shelf,  far  above  the  reach  of  the 

220 


THE     NEW   WINE    IN    OLD     BOTTLES 

babes  in  Christ,  are  the  old  bottles  of  thought,  "Creeds" 
we  call  them.  What  a  long  row!  All  sorts  and  sizes 
from  the  Apostles'  Creed  and  the  Nicene  Creed  and  the 
Athanasian  Creed  down  to  the  Cambridge  Platform  and 
even  to  the  creed  of  1883 :  and  nearly  every  one  of  these 
bottles,  I  think  I  may  say  every  one  of  them,  has  a 
crack  in  it  somewhere  through  which  the  wine  has  burst 
out. 

From  earliest  times  the  Church  has  sought  to  formu- 
late Christian  truth  systematically  and  permanently,  and 
to  make  these  creeds  or  statements  of  doctrine  the  stand- 
ards of  Christian  thought  for  all  succeeding  generations. 
One  council  of  the  Fathers  even  went  so  far  as  positively 
to  declare  at  the  end  of  the  creed  which  it  had  formulated, 
"Unless  a  man  believe  every  part  of  this  creed,  he  shall 
no  doubt  perish  everlastingly."  Each  of  these  creeds 
has  stood  for  a  greater  or  less  period  as  the  ultimate 
standard  of  orthodoxy  in  Christian  thinking,  and  each 
in  turn  has  been  given  up  after  a  severe  struggle  only 
when  the  independent  spirit  of  a  growing  religious  life 
has  refused  longer  to  be  restrained  and  hampered  by  the 
rigidity  of  obsolete  expression. 

Religious  beliefs,  like  all  other  products  of  the  human 
mind,  are  subject  to  the  process  of  evolution.  Change, 
not  fixity,  is  the  law  of  faith.  Minds  differ.  Every 
generation  looks  at  truth  from  a  new  standpoint.  The 
experience  and  needs  of  every  succeeding  age  are  es- 
sentially new.  The  truth  of  one  generation  becomes  the 
untruth  of  the  next,  unless  it  is  newly  expressed  and 
freshly  applied.  It  is  not  more  necessary  to  keep  our 
text-books  of  science  carefully  revised  and  brought  up 
to  date  that  it  is  to  keep  the  thought  of  the  disciple 
abreast  of  his  advancing  experience.  Our  beliefs  are  the 
outgrowth  of  our  experience.  A  fixed  belief  therefore 
betokens  an  experience  petrified  or  stagnated. 

So  these  carefully  arranged  creeds,  these  symbols  of 
Christian  truth  that  have  been  wrought  out  of  much  pray- 

221 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

er  and  study  and  even  angry  debate,  have  been  aban- 
doned one  by  one  and  permitted  to  give  place  to  others 
expressing  later  and  more  mature  thought  which  should 
be  set  aside  in  their  turn  or  even  destroyed.  The  process 
has  become  well-nigh  monotonous  in  its  frequent  repeti- 
tion, yet  men  are  slow  to  learn  the  lesson,  and  each  new 
generation  seems  to  look  upon  its  own  belief  as  the  fi- 
nal form  of  truth's  expression  and  to  cling  to  it  as  per- 
sistently and  to  insist  upon  its  acceptance  as  dogmatically 
as  though  it  had  not  utterly  repudiated  the  right  of  its 
predecessors  to  do  the  same.  And  so  the  contest  be- 
tween orthodoxy  and  heresy  continues,  quite  regardless 
of  the  fact  that  the  heresy  of  yesterday  is  ever  the  or- 
thodoxy of  to-day,  and  the  heresy  of  to-day  will  as  surely 
be  the  orthodoxy  of  to-morrow. 

Were  the  only  evil  results  of  this  protracted  struggle 
the  destruction  of  the  creeds  and  the  heart-burnings  of 
their  defenders,  that  would  be  a  comparatively  trifling 
matter.  The  bottles  can  well  be  spared.  But  when  we 
think  of  the  enormous  waste  of  the  new  wine  of  the  king- 
dom, of  the  spiritual  power  that  has  been  lost,  of  the 
spiritual  experience  that  has  been  hampered  and  mis- 
directed, of  the  spiritual  lives  that  have  been  blighted, 
who  can  ever  estimate  the  damage  that  has  been  done? 

Then,  too,  there  are  the  old  bottles  of  action.  There 
are  fixed  rules  of  conduct  by  which  certain  disciples 
would  seek  to  determine  for  themselves  and  for  all  their 
fellow  Christians  just  what  occupations  and  recreations 
are  proper  for  a  follower  of  the  Christ.  Always  we  may 
find  those  Christians  who  think  that  religion  consists  in 
doing  certain  things  and  not  doing  other  certain  things, 
and  who  are  ready  to  map  out  with  precision  the  conduct 
of  every  Christian  life,  making  each  life  as  like  every 
other  life  as  are  different  coins  from  the  same  die. 

Those  Judaizers  who  sought  to  lay  a  heavy  burden  of 
rules  and  duties  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  new  converts 
in  Asia  Minor  have  had  their  imitators  in  every  age  and 

222 


THE    NEW    WINE    IN    OLD    BOTTLES 

land.  They  are  the  disciples  who  measure  every  Chris- 
tian life  by  the  yard-stick  of  their  own  conscience,  and 
cut  every  Christian  duty  by  the  pattern  of  their  own  ser- 
vice; who  believe  that  no  one  can  be  a  true  Christian 
who  does  not  do  just  as  they  do  and  feel  just  as  the^ 
feel.  Such  were  the  well-meaning  persons  of  John  Bun- 
yan's  day  who  haunted  his  soul  in  his  boyhood  days 
with  the  idea  that  he  had  committed  a  grievous  sin  and 
imperiled  his  soul's  eternal  salvation  every  time  he  played 
the  innocent  game  of  "tip-cat."  Such,  too,  were  those 
of  the  Puritans  who  loaded  the  Sabbath  with  duties  and 
restrictions  that  made  the  day  a  trial  and  a  weariness  to 
all  who  were  not  fashioned  after  the  Puritan  model  in 
spirit  and  in  temper. 

Do  we  not  find  some  even  in  our  own  time  who  ex- 
pect the  religious  Hfe  of  youth  to  take  precisely  the  same 
form  as  that  of  mature  age?  Are  there  none  who  look 
with  suspicion  upon  the  Christian  Endeavor  movement 
and  similar  forms  of  religious  activity,  because  all  the 
members  of  these  modern  organizations  do  not  fall  in 
with  the  established  and  conventional  methods  of  the 
Christian  Church?  Then,  too,  the  saint  of  threescore 
years  cares  nothing  for  recreation  or  amusement.  His 
blood  is  thin,  his  muscles  are  stiflf,  he  has  passed  through 
many  long  years  of  toil  and  trial,  consequently  his  re- 
ligious feeling  seeks  expression  in  quiet  and  even  solemn 
forms.  Too  often  he  expects  the  young  disciple  with  an 
abundance  of  animal  spirits  and  an  overflowing  enthusi- 
asm to  mold  his  life  after  the  same  staid  fashion,  and 
frowns  upon  all  jollity  and  mirth  as  tokens  of  an  unre- 
generate  condition. 

The  repeated  "Thou  shalt  not"  of  Sinai  is  an  old  bot- 
tle to-day.  The  new  bottle  of  the  gospel  is  labeled, 
"Thou  shalt."  The  old  bottle  is  manufactured  from  pre- 
cepts, the  new  from  principles.  And  it  is  unspeakably 
better  to  leave  even  the  young  disciple  to  work  out  the 
application  of  these  principles  in  his  own  mind  and  life 

223 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

than  it  is  to  cramp  him  and  condemn  him  to  perpetual 
spiritual  infancy  by  multiplying  precepts. 

I  verily  believe  that  many  an  honest  purpose  to  serve 
Christ  and  many  a  devout  aspiration  to  a  higher  life 
has  been  wholly  dissipated  by  the  fruitless  effort  of  youth 
to  conform  itself  to  a  type  of  religious  action  and  ser- 
vice fitted  only  to  mature  years.  The  new  wine  of  youth- 
ful experience  could  not  compress  itself  within  the  old 
bottles  of  mature  habit  and  aged  seriousness,  and  so  the 
bottles  burst  and  the  wine  was  spilled. 

Once,  again,  I  have  spoken  of  the  bottles  of  expres- 
sion. How  we  delight  to  bottle  up  our  religion  in  certain 
pet  phrases !  We  catch  some  well-turned  sentence  from 
the  lips  of  a  living,  working  Christian,  and  straightway 
we  adopt  it  as  the  vehicle  of  our  own  thought  or  feeling. 
It  may  be  a  choice  form  of  prayer  or  a  crisp  and  express- 
ive bit  of  testimony  or  a  pungent  word  of  exhortation. 
Whatever  it  is,  it  answers  the  purpose  very  well  so  long 
as  the  experience  which  we  put  into  it  is  sufficiently  old. 
But  fresh  experience,  living  desire,  or  aspiration  or  en- 
thusiasm cannot  be  thrust  into  any  of  these  old  forms. 
They  will  require  for  their  utterance  new  phrases,  fresh 
and  unworn  forms  of  expression. 

As  a  young  man  Mr.  Moody  lived  in  Boston,  and  it 
was  in  that  city  that  he  began  his  Christian  life.  After- 
wards he  went  to  Chicago  and  there  gave  himself  to  the 
service  of  God  in  a  more  complete  consecration  and  made 
rapid  progress  in  Christian  life  and  experience.  Return- 
ing to  Boston  after  an  absence  of  fifteen  years  for  the 
purpose  of  undertaking  important  evangelistic  work, 
he  assembled  the  Christian  people  of  the  churches  in  a 
great  meeting  for  preparation.  As  the  meeting  drew  to 
a  close  he  said  to  them,  "Why,  the  Christian  people  of 
Boston  are  praying  the  same  old  prayers  that  they  were 
praying  fifteen  years  ago  when  I  lived  in  the  city!  Is  it 
strange  that  sinners  are  not  converted  when  the  saints 
are  not  making  any  progress  in  Christian  experience  ?" 

224 


THE  NEW  WINE  IN  OLD  BOTTLES 

Very  soon  after  the  revival  began  to  take  effect  those 
old  prayers  disappeared  and  new  ones  began  to  take  their 
place.  That  is  always  one  of  the  first  signs  of  a  gen- 
uine revival — the  people  begin  to  pray  new  prayers  anQ 
to  bring  new  testimonies  and  fresh  suggestions  to  the 
prayer-meetings.  Just  as  soon  as  souls  begin  to  be 
awakened  and  to  have  new  desires  and  new  experiences 
and  a  new  enthusiasm,  these  will  surely  begin  to  express 
themselves  in  new  forms  of  speech.  The  elegant  old 
prayers  that  have  been  used  for  a  lifetime,  yes,  that  have 
many  of  them  been  handed  down  from  father  to  son 
for  generations,  will  be  cast  aside  and  there  will  be  a 
living  freshness  about  every  prayer  that  will  impress  it- 
self upon  all  who  hear  it.  It  will  be  a  direct  and  simple 
expression  of  immediate  personal  needs. 

Who  has  not  seen  these  old  bottles  of  prayer  and  tes- 
timony and  exhortation  burst  into  fragments  by  the 
coming  of  a  great  revival  that  filled  every  soul  with  a  new 
and  living  experience  and  that  pressed  upon  all  with 
new  desires  and  fresh  purposes? 

Oh,  we  are  very  careful  of  the  bottles ;  but  of  what 
value  are  they?  They  are  nothing  in  themselves.  The 
wine,  the  wine,  that  is  the  important  thing.  In  other 
words,  the  outward  form,  whether  in  thought  or  action 
or  expression,  is  wholly  subordinate.  The  matter  of 
vital  importance,  the  only  important  matter,  is  the  spiri- 
tual experience  and  life,  the  growing,  expanding  Christ- 
life  in  the  soul.  If  we  but  make  sure  of  that,  it  will  dis- 
cover for  itself  some  fitting  form  of  embodiment  and 
expression. 

The  parable  suggests  to  every  hearer  two  pertinent 
questions.  First,  your  ideal  of  religion,  what  is  it?  A 
collection  of  old  bottles  waiting  to  be  filled  with  lifeless 
liquor?  Are  you  trying  to  conform  your  life  to  certain 
fixed  standards  that  men  have  styled  Christian?  Are 
you  striving  to  school  your  mind  to  some  fixed  state- 
ment of  beHef  (the  "deep  sleep  of  a  settled  conviction"), 

225 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

your  conduct  to  a  prescribed  standard  of  action,  your 
speech  to  approved  forms  of  expression?  In  a  word, 
are  you  thinking  first  and  chiefly  of  certain  outward 
forms  that  have  obtained  recognition  in  the  Christian 
world  at  large  and  are  commonly  approved  as  religious 
and  proper?  That  is  the  ideal  of  the  scribes  and  Phari- 
sees. The  word  of  the  Master  is,  "Seek  first  and  above 
all  else  the  new  wine  of  a  living  spiritual  experience. 
Have  done  with  the  old  forms.  Never  mind  the  external. 
Put  the  life  first  and  above  all,  and  when  you  have  made 
sure  of  that,  let  it  clothe  itself  and  express  itself  in  what- 
soever forms  are  best  adapted  to  it.  Let  the  forms  bo 
as  new  and  as  elastic  as  the  life  which  they  contain." 

In  the  second  place,  your  religious  experience,  how 
does  it  express  itself?  Does  it  fall  naturally  and  easily 
into  old  forms  and  familiar  phrases?  Are  you  in  bond- 
age to  these?  Does  it  never  call  for  the  use  of  an  un- 
familiar word  or  the  performance  of  an  unconventional 
act?  As  to  thought,  are  you  simply  repeating  the 
thoughts  of  past  generations?  As  to  action,  are  you 
quite  content  with  the  popular  standards  of  life  and  ser- 
vice? As  to  expression,  do  you  find  yourself  falling 
into  stereotyped  forms  of  prayer  and  of  testimony,  bor- 
rowing the  ready-made  forms  of  others?  Have  a  care! 
The  wine  is  getting  old,  or  the  old  bottles  would  not  so 
readily  contain  it. 

Such  is  not  the  true  Christian  life.  That,  says  our 
Lord,  is  new,  living,  expanding,  eflFervescing,  a  fresh 
supply  every  year,  a  novel  experience  every  day,  a  con- 
stant discovery,  a  ceaseless  progress.  Do  not  rest  in 
the  idle  satisfaction  of  the  half-intoxicated  feaster,  say- 
ing, "The  old  is  better" ;  but  come  day  by  day  and  let 
your  soul  be  filled  with  the  new  wine  of  the  kingdom 
fresh  from  the  vintage  of  Calvary. 


226 


Self-satisfied 
Conservatism 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

Se  If-sat  i  sf  i  ed 
Conservatism 

THE  REVELER 

Luke  5:39 
Text.— "//^  saith,  The  old  is  good.""— Luke  5:39 

ONSERVATISM  is  of  two  kinds.  There  is 
a  strong  and  intelligent  conservatism  that 
acts  upon  human  thought  like  the  ballast  up- 
on a  vessel  or  the  brake  upon  a  coach,  check- 
ing its  career  only  to  render  its  forward 
movement  more  steady,  safe  and  permanent,  and  there 
is  a  stupid  and  self-satisfied  conservatism  that  is  like 
the  ball  and  chain  upon  the  ankles,  helping  nothing  and 
hindering  all  rapid  or  effectual  progress,  all  worthy 
achievement — the  symbol,  in  short,  of  bondage.  The  one 
recognizes  clearly  the  value  of  established  opinions  and 
past  achievement,  and  makes  of  these  stepping-stones 
to  higher  things  and  nobler  thoughts  in  the  present  and 
for  the  future.  The  other,  content  with  the  riches  in- 
herited from  the  past,  makes  of  them  a  barricade  to  close 
the  pathway  of  future  progress. 

It  is  this  inertia  of  a  stupid  and  self-satisfied  conser- 
vatism that  Jesus  portrays  in  his  brief  sketch  of  the  half- 
drunken  reveler.  Already  he  has  spoken  two  parables 
illustrating  different  phases  of  the  general  topic ;  now 
he  adds  the  capstone  to  the  pyramid  and  makes  it  com- 
plete. As  we  study  the  picture  we  discover  in  it  a  most 
vivid  expression  of  the  truth  which  has  since  passed  into 

229 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

a  proverb,  viz.,  The  worst  enemy  of  the  better  is  the  good. 
The  cause  of  human  progress  is  less  endangered  by  the 
positive  opposition  of  evil  than  by  the  negative  satis- 
faction with  lesser  good. 

This  inertia  of  contentment  crops  out  in  the  most  trif- 
ling matters.  The  old  coat,  the  old  shoes,  the  old  dress, 
— how  we  cling  to  these  long  after  the  new  have  been 
purchased  and  hang  in  the  wardrobe  ready  for  our  use ! 
Propriety,  respectability,  perhaps  even  health  calls  for 
the  adoption  of  the  new,  but  we  enjoy  the  easy  comfort 
to  which  we  have  become  accustomed,  and  we  still  think 
that  "the  old  is  the  good." 

In  matters  more  vital  the  same  spirit  reveals  itself 
with  effects  proportionately  more  disastrous.  The  prog- 
ress of  the  industrial  world  is  wrought  through  a  con- 
tinuous struggle  with  blind  conservatism.  Every  new 
idea,  every  novel  invention,  has  been  compelled  to  win 
its  way  to  popular  acceptance  in  the  face  of  bitter  oppo- 
sition. Not  a  machine,  however  marvelous  in  its  work- 
ing or  beneficient  in  its  product,  but  has  been  decried 
as  the  enemy  of  the  working  man  or  as  inferior  to 
instruments  already  in  use.  Your  Hargraves  or  your 
Arkwright,  offering  to  mankind  machines  of  more  value 
than  all  the  wealth  of  the  Indies,  has  met  with  suspi- 
cion and  calumny  and  even  with  violence  from  both 
workmen  and  employers,  who  with  one  voice  have  cried, 
"The  old  is  the  good." 

In  the  realm  of  science  and  education,  where,  if  any- 
where, we  should  expect  receptive  minds  and  the  pro- 
gressive spirit,  not  alone  new  theories  but  clearest  demon- 
strations as  well  are  confronted  with  this  inertia  of  con- 
servative thought  that  is  slow  to  give  them  a  place  and 
to  make  use  of  the  truth  which  they  reveal.  Copernicus 
makes  discoveries  that  revolutionize  the  science  of  astron- 
omy, and  the  ghost  of  old  Ptolemy  is  conjured  up  to 
haunt  and  oppose  him.  Harvey  finds  the  key  to  the 
circulation  of  the  blood,  and  many  of  his  learned  con- 

230 


THE  REVELER 

temporaries  confront  him  with  the  ancient  notions  of 
Aristotle.  Darwin  and  Huxley  propound  the  doctrine 
of  evolution,  and  are  denounced  as  infidels  on  the  author- 
ity of  Moses.  For  scholars  are  no  less  prone  than  others 
to  join  in  the  cry,  "The  old  is  the  good." 

Oh,  yes,  that  is  the  spirit  of  the  Old  World!  But 
America  is  the  New  World  and  the  American  people  are 
a  new  people.  Everything  is  new  with  us,  so  as  a  matter 
of  course  we  shall  find  a  wholly  different  spirit  ruling 
here.  Shall  we?  shall  we?  What,  did  you  never  hear 
any  one  right  here  in  America  sighing  for  "the  good  old 
times"?  If  the  talk  is  of  statesmen,  they  will  hark  back 
to  Jefferson  and  Adams  and  Hamilton ;  if  it  is  of  preach- 
ers, they  will  tell  you  of  Edwards  and  Payson  and  Nettle- 
ton;  if  of  orators,  they  will  remind  you  of  Patrick 
Henry  and  Choate  and  Webster ;  if  of  social  queens,  they 
will  run  over  the  list  of  colonial  dames  from  Dorothy 
Hancock  to  Martha  Washington;  and  they  are  sure  that 
the  present  age  cannot  show  the  equal  of  any  of  these. 
Speak  of  social  conditions  and  they  will  paint  dismal 
pictures  of  the  decadence  of  our  rural  communities  and 
the  moral  degeneracy  of  our  cities.  Agitators  loudly 
insist  upon  the  superiority  of  former  industrial  condi- 
tions, and  Christian  preachers  often  descant  in  glowing 
terms  upon  the  transcendent  piety  of  the  Pilgrim  fathers 
and  the  holy  calm  of  the  Puritan  Sabbath. 

It  were  difficult  to  find  a  person  of  advanced  age  who 
will  acknowledge  that  conditions,  social,  political,  indus- 
trial or  religious  are  as  good  at  the  present  time  as  they 
were  in  his  youth.  For  even  in  this  new  country  and  amid 
the  new  manifestations  of  the  most  wondrous  progress 
one  may  continually  hear  the  echo  of  those  maudlin 
words,  "The  old  is  the  good." 

Jesus  was  an  innovator.  Progress  was  the  very  es- 
sence of  his  gospel.  To  make  all  things  new  was  his 
declared  purpose.  His  teaching  was  more  than  revo- 
lutionary :  it  was  evolutionary.     That  is  to  sav,  it  meant 

231 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

not  merely  the  overturning  of  the  old  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  new  once  for  all,  but  a  perpetual  overturning, 
a  continuous  revelation  of  new  truth,  a  fresh  gospel  for 
every  age,  a  new  experience  for  every  generation;  yes, 
an  untried  pathway  for  every  individual  and  every  day. 

What  wonder,  then,  that  he  met  with  continual  and 
bitter  opposition  from  scribes  and  Pharisees?  They  were 
the  embodiments  of  conservatism  in  its  worst  form.  The 
tradition  of  the  elders  was  their  one  standard  of  truth, 
their  ideal  of  religion  and  life.  To  maintain  that  tra- 
dition intact  was  their  chief  aim.  Jesus  permitted  his 
disciples  unrebuked  to  disregard  tradition.  They  ate 
with  unwashed  hands.  They  plucked  the  heads  of 
wheat  on  the  Sabbath.  They  were  indifferent  in  the 
matter  of  fasting.  They  neglected  numberless  points 
that  these  sticklers  considered  vital.  And  Jesus  seemed 
to  encourage  rather  than  to  restrain  them.  Such  an  atti- 
tude towards  ancient  and  accepted  ideals  aroused  preju- 
dice in  the  minds  of  the  rulers.  They  closed  their  minds 
and  hearts  and  utterly  refused  to  give  the  new  doctrine  a 
hearing.  It  was  new  and  that  was  with  them  enough  to 
condemn  it.  On  that  ground  alone  it  was  rejected  and  its 
Exponent  was  crucified. 

At  an  early  period  in  our  Lord's  ministry  this  predi- 
lection for  the  old  and  distrust  of  the  new  finds  ex- 
pression in  specific  questioning.  "Why  do  the  disciples 
of  John  fast  often^  and  make  prayers,  and  likewise  the 
disciples  of  the  Pharisees;  but  thine  eat  and  drink?"  A 
small  matter  truly  and  of  trifling  import  in  itself.  Yet 
the  question  is  a  telltale  straw.  It  betrays  the  current  of 
a  narrow  conservatism  that  is  to  hamper  the  work  of 
the  Redeemer  at  every  step  with  disputes  about  the  Sab- 
bath or  the  law  or  authority  or  what  not;  consequently 
he  replies  to  its  cavil  with  a  threefold  group  of  parables, 
brief,  cogent,  effective.  In  the  first  two  parables  of  the 
triad  he  clearly  exposes  their  false  notions  regarding  his 
gospel  and  unhesitatingly  declares  its  newness.     He  has 

232 


THE  REVELER 

not  come  to  patch  up  an  old  and  worn-out  system  of  re- 
ligion, nor  to  pour  new  spiritual  life  into  old  forms  and 
ceremonies.  He  has  come  to  make  all  things  new.  The 
new  life  demands  new  systems  and  new  forms. 

He  adds  this  third  parable  to  show  that  their  con- 
servatism is  not  that  wise  and  commendable  reverence  for 
the  best  things  of  the  past  that  makes  for  safe  and  per- 
manent progress  in  the  present,  but  rather  a  senseless 
and  besotted  content  with  the  old  that  beclouds  the  mind 
with  prejudice  and  blocks  the  pathway  of  all  advance- 
ment. The  two  preceding  parables  recognize  a  spirit  of 
honest  inquiry  that  animates  some  of  his  questioners. 
This  third  exposes  and  rebukes  the  spirit  of  self-satis- 
fied prejudice  that  is  too  clearly  revealed  in  others. 

The  inertia  of  a  stupid  and  self-satisfied  conservatism 
— have  those  ancient  scribes  and  Pharisees  a  monopoly 
of  this  spirit?  Unfortunately  not.  The  same  spirit  has 
found  a  lodgment  in  many  a  Christian  heart,  and  abides 
even  to  the  present  day  in  the  Christian  Church.  Every 
advance  movement  of  spiritual  thought  and  life  has  been 
compelled  to  do  battle  with  it  before  it  has  won  recog- 
nition and  authority  among  the  leaders  of  the  Christian 
world.  Always  there  are  those,  and  always  too  they  are 
in  the  majority,  who  cling  with  a  blind  devotion  to  past 
ideals  and  established  precedents,  who  revere  time-hon- 
cred  customs  and  methods,  who  plant  their  faith  upon  re- 
ceived interpretations  of  the  gospel  and  are  indignant 
when  some  eager  student  of  divine  truth  or  some  daring 
explorer  in  the  realm  of  Christian  experience  dares  to 
announce  a  fresh  revelation  or  new  discovery  of  truth. 

History  is  in  the  main  a  record  of  wars  and  strife. 
In  this  respect  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church  is  no 
exception  to  the  general  rule.  The  struggles  that  have 
v/rought  out  the  web  of  Church  history  have  been  exceed- 
ingly monotonous  in  character  though  waged  on  manv 
different  fields.  We  may  almost  say  that  it  has  been  but 
one  struggle  often  changing  front  and  moving  from  field 

233 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

to  field  with  the  progress  of  the  ages.  It  is  the  struggle 
between  orthodoxy  and  heresy,  in  which  orthodoxy  is 
the  name  arrogated  to  itself  by  received  opinion,  while 
heresy  is  the  new  thought  just  dawning  and  clamoring 
for  recognition.  As  a  rule  the  heresy  of  one  century  be- 
comes the  orthodoxy  of  the  next,  and  too  often  its  ad- 
vocates repeat  the  folly  of  their  early  opponents  by  reject- 
ing yet  newer  and  more  advanced  thought  while  they, 
too,  say,  "The  old  is  the  good." 

In  tracing  the  course  of  the  running  warfare  that  has 
been  carried  on  in  our  own  land  between  "New  school" 
and  "Old  school"  theologians,  one  is  obliged  to  take  his 
bearings  frequently  in  order  that  he  may  know  precisely 
what  phase  of  "Old  school"  or  "New  school"  he  is  read- 
ing about,  since  the  "New  school"  of  yesterday  is  the 
"Old  school"  of  to-day,  and  the  "New  school"  of  to-day 
will  certainly  be  the  "Old  school"  of  to-morrow.  A 
Nettleton  or  a  Lyman  Beecher  preaches  a  gospel  mes- 
sage born  of  fresh  thought  and  living  experience,  and  he 
is  confronted  with  prejudice  and  suspicion.  He  is  a 
"New  Light,"  and  hears  on  every  side  the  exclamation, 
"The  old  is  the  good,"  "The  old  is  the  good."  At  length 
the  vigor  of  his  heaven-born  preaching  prevails,  and  his 
comes  to  be  the  accepted  doctrine.  Then  he  in  turn 
opposes  the  preaching  of  a  Finney  who  is  the  herald  of 
yet  more  advanced  thought,  and  to  the  newer  truth  re- 
sponds with  the  familiar  protest,  "The  old  is  the  good." 

I  doubt  if  ever  there  was  a  Christian  preacher  giving 
to  his  people  messages  bom  out  of  a  living  and  growing 
experience  of  divine  love  who  has  not  been  perpetually 
hounded  by  a  few  ultra-conservative  church-members 
clamoring  for  the  "old  gospel."  and  criticizing  his  utter- 
ances as  dangerously  novel  and  sensational.  When  men 
speak  thus  of  the  "old  gospel,"  they  invariably  mean  the 
hackneyed  phrases  and  doctrinal  statements  to  which  they 
have  been  accustomed  from  childhood. 

234 


THE  REVELER 

Within  the  memory  of  men  now  living  they  used  to 
sing— 

"The  old-time  religion 
Is  good  enough  for  me." 

Although  the  hymn  has  now  fallen  into  disuse,  unfor- 
tunately its  spirit  still  survives  in  many  minds.  Not  long 
ago  a  young  man  preaching  in  a  village  in  the  state  of 
New  York  found  the  older  members  of  the  church  al- 
ways ready  to  speak  of  the  great  revival  that  took  place 
in  that  village  under  the  preaching  of  Charles  G.  Finney 
more  than  sixty  years  before.  According  to  their  unan- 
imous testimony  the  preaching  and  spiritual  life  of  the 
present  day  were  not  to  be  compared  with  what  was 
then  witnessed.  Of  course  there  was  little  encourage- 
ment for  the  most  devoted  preacher  to  labor  when  his 
every  effort  only  aroused  the  cry,  "The  old  is  the  good." 

More  recently  in  a  progressive  Massachusetts  city  a 
church  has  just  called  a  new  pastor,  and  at  his  installa- 
tion service  the  chairman  of  the  candidating  committee, 
giving  a  public  report  of  the  work  done  in  seeking  a 
pastor,  said  that  at  the  outset  the  committee  determined 
not  to  consider  any  man  who  held  new  views  regarding 
the  Bible,  but  to  find  one  sound  in  the  faith  who  would 
preach  the  old  gospel  without  any  modern  additions  or 
improvements.  What  position  could  be  more  absurd? 
One  need  not  be  a  radical  or  tainted  with  the  "higher 
criticism"  to  see  that  such  an  attitude  is  fatal  to  spiritual 
freedom  and  progress.  Alas,  the  spirit  of  the  half- 
intoxicated  reveler  survives  in  the  Christian  Church  and 
mutters  ever  the  one  refrain,  "The  old  is  the  good." 

To  intelligent  and  wise  conservatism  the  religion  of 
to-day  owes  a  debt  of  gratitude ;  but  the  conservatism 
that  absolutely  closes  eye  and  mind  to  all  things  new  is 
wholly  out  of  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ. 
So  profound  a  thinker  as  Bacon  has  said,  "They  that 
reverence  too  much  old  times  are  but  a  scorn  to  the  nev/." 

S35 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

We  are  wont  to  think  of  this  blind  and  self-satisfied 
conservatism  as  characteristic  of  dull  minds  and  of  souls 
that  have  never  known  the  joy  and  power  of  a  new  expe- 
rience. And  so  it  is.  The  indifferent,  the  lethargic,  the 
conventional  are  always  content  with  the  old,  satisfied 
with  present  good  or  even  want  of  good.  But  when  we 
have  said  this  we  have  not  told  the  whole  truth.  We  have 
not  even  touched  the  truth  on  its  most  troublesome  side. 
The  most  progressive  souls  are  not  free  from  the  in- 
fluence of  this  spirit.  Strange  it  may  be,  nevertheless 
it  is  true,  that  self-satisfied  conservatism  is  a  peculiar 
danger  of  radically  progressive  minds.  How,  do  you 
ask?  Partly  as  a  result  of  reaction  from  radicalism; 
chiefly  through  the  intoxication  of  enthusiasm  for  a 
good  cause. 

What  more  natural,  nay,  almost  inevitable,  than  that 
one  who  has  thrown  himself  with  all  his  might  into  the 
advocacy  of  some  newly  discovered  truth  should  become 
so  filled  with  the  spirit  of  that  truth  that  it  should  at 
length  seem  to  him  the  greatest  and  most  vital  truth 
ever  revealed?  At  first  he  must  press  forward  against 
the  opposition  of  older  conservatism;  and  with  victory 
comes  a  certain  intoxication  of  success.  The  importance 
of  his  revelation  takes  complete  possession  of  his  mind. 
Now  some  prophet  of  yet  higher  and  more  advanced 
truth  appears.  But  the  battle  spirit  is  on  and  the  chal- 
lenge remains  posted  to  hold  the  field  against  all  comers. 
Utterly  unconscious  of  the  transformation  that  has 
taken  place  in  and  around  him,  the  voice  that  was  former- 
ly raised  in  defence  of  the  new  now  joins  the  growing 
chorus,  "The  old  is  the  good";  for  his  new  has  now  be- 
come the  old. 

Against  this  reaction  of  zeal,  this  intoxication  of  en- 
thusiasm, we  must  guard  ourselves,  lest  our  own  spirit 
of  progress  become  at  last  a  stupid  and  self-satisfied 
conservatism.  Life  means  progress,  continuous  prog- 
ress and  growth.     He  whose  mind  and  heart  are  closed 

236 


THE  REVELER 

to  further  revelations  and  experiences  in  the  realm  of 
divine  truth  is  spiritually  dead.  To  stand  still,  though 
it  were  at  the  very  gate  of  heaven,  is  to  invite  the  soul  s 
destruction.  Woe  to  that  disciple  who  fancies  that  he 
has  at  length  reached  the  end  of  his  course  in  the  search 
for  truth  or  in  the  possibilities  of  service;  for  he  will 
soon  feel  the  rigor  of  death  settling  upon  him!  And 
there  is  no  more  infallible  token  of  the  coming  of  death 
than  this,  that  the  heart  ceases  to  aspire  to  new  expe- 
riences and  greets  every  overture  of  progress  with  the 
words,  "The  old  is  the  good." 

So  brief  and  fragmentary  is  this  group  of  parables, 
that  the  majority  of  expositors  omit  it  altogether,  and 
two  of  the  evangelists,  Matthew  and  Mark,  fail  to  re- 
cord the  third  of  the  group.  To  my  mind,  however, 
they  are  no  less  suggestive  and  practical  than  others  that 
have  been  more  often  reviewed.  And  this  last  is  a 
worthy  capstone  to  the  group.  To-day  as  never  before 
its  message  touches  the  life  of  the  Christian  Church  at 
a  vital  point.  However  it  may  have  been  in  the  past, 
the  intelligent  Christian  worker  of  the  present  age  must 
recognize  the  fact  that  the  great  obstacles  against  which 
we  must  strive  now-a-days  are  not  gross  sins  and  un- 
qualified evils.  The  daily  choice  of  the  disciple  is  be- 
tween the  good  and  the  better,  between  satisfaction  with 
the  inheritance  from  the  past  and  aggressive  effort  for 
new  conquests.  Ours  is  the  rich  legacy  of  nearly  twenty 
Christian  centuries.  The  vintage  of  all  lands  and  climes 
in  character,  in  intellect,  in  religious  truth  and  spiritual 
experience  has  been  stored  up  for  our  use.  Truly  thq 
old  is  good,  and  many  a  soul  is  content  merely  to  enjoy 
that  which  has  been  given,  to  rest  at  ease  like  the  dis- 
ciples on  the  Mount  of  Transfiguration.  But  the  call 
of  the  Christ  is  to  ceaseless  progress.  The  watchword 
of  his  kingdom  is  "Forward!"  The  old  may  be  good, 
but  the  new  is  better.  However  great  the  achievements, 
however  rich  the  experience,  however  glorious  the  con- 

237 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

quests  of  the  past,  the  future  holds  achievements  that 
are  greater,  experiences  that  are  richer,  conquests  that 
are  far  more  glorious.  Then  let  us  be  thankful  that  the 
old  is  so  good ;  but  let  us  not  make  of  the  good  a  weight 
to  anchor  our  souls  fast  to  earth;  rather  let  us  shape  it 
into  wings  that  shall  bear  us  aloft  to  new  and  higher 
atmospheres  and  shall  fit  us  for  larger  and  nobler 
service. 


838 


Counting  the 
Cost 


CHAPTER  XIX 

Counting  the  Cost 

THE   TOWER   BUILDER 

Luke  14:28-30 

Text.— "Co««/  the  cost. '  '—Luke  14 :  28 

JESUS  never  belittled  the  difficulties  of  his  service. 
He  never  sought  to  win  followers  by  making  the 
Christian  life  seem  easy,  or  in  any  way  modify- 
ing the  absoluteness  and  perfection  of  the  divine 
requirements.  He  never  dazzled  the  minds  of 
his  hearers  with  glowing  promises  of  reward  either 
here  or  hereafter  while  concealing  the  pain  and  the 
suffering  and  the  sacrifice  by  means  of  which  that  re- 
ward must  be  obtained.  On  the  contrary,  he  declares 
with  the  utmost  clearness,  intensified  by  frequent  reit- 
eration, the  exacting  standards  of  God's  law,  and  paints 
in  vivid  colors  the  toil  and  danger  and  complete  self- 
surrender  that  are  the  necessary  conditions  of  success 
in  all  spiritual  endeavor.  At  times  his  language  seems 
to  border  on  exaggeration  in  consequence  of  his  effort 
to  make  the  truth  perfectly  clear.  At  other  times  we 
feel  that  his  utterance  is  well-nigh  cruel  and  forbiddin.r^. 
Why  is  this?  Is  it  because  he  wishes  to  repel  from 
his  service  those  who  come  to  him  with  eager  proffers 
of  allegiance?  Does  he  wish  to  blight  the  tender  shoots 
of  faith  and  loyalty  that  are  just  springing  in  the  soil 
of  the  heart?  Surely  not  that!  What  then?  The  an- 
swer speaks  itself.     In  the  first  place,  he  would  guard 

241 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

against  later  discouragement  and  defection  on  the  part 
of  disciples  by  giving  them  a  clear  view  of  the  diffi- 
culties and  dangers  of  their  service  at  the  very  outset — 
yes,  before  they  have  taken  the  first  step  in  self-commit- 
ment to  him.  Besides  this,  and  even  more  important, 
he  would  by  this  frank  portrayal  of  self-renunciation 
and  sacrifice  call  forth  the  strongest  elements  of  the 
manly  and  womanly  nature  in  the  spirit  of  struggle  and 
conquest.  It  is  a  challenge  to  thoughtfulness  and  to  hero- 
ism, the  supreme  qualities  of  enlightened  manhood.  If 
these  qualities  be  enlisted  under  the  banner  of  the  Christ 
discipleship  is  strong  and  persistent.  Without  them 
there  must  be  repeated  lapses. 

In  the  course  of  his  ministry  great  multitudes  have 
gathered  about  Jesus,  drawn  by  many  and  diverse  mo- 
tives. Some  have  come  out  of  mere  curiosity  to  hear  his 
words  and  see  his  mighty  works.  Others  have  attached 
themselves  to  him  through  gratitude  for  kind  deeds 
wrought  upon  themselves  or  their  friends.  And  others 
still  are  moved  by  a  deep  but  somewhat  undefined  hope 
of  greater  things  yet  to  be  revealed.  Few  if  any  of  them 
all  have  any  adequate  notion  of  what  is  involved  in  true 
discipleship.  Their  loyalty  is  superficial  at  best,  their  at- 
tachment weak. 

Suddenly  the  Master  turns  to  them,  and  in  a  tone  at 
once  profoundly  serious  and  eagerly  hopeful  exclaims, 
"If  any  man  cometh  unto  me,  and  hateth  not  his  own 
father,  and  mother,  and  wife,  and  children,  and  breth- 
ren, and  sisters,  yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot 
be  my  disciple.  Whosoever  doth  not  bear  his  own  cross, 
and  come  after  me,  cannot  be  my  disciple."  And  I  fancy 
that  many  in  that  vast  multitude,  hearing  these  words, 
turned  away  and  forsook  their  high  quest,  some  with 
sighs  of  regret,  others  with  words  of  contempt  and  ridi- 
cule. There  were  a  few,  however,  perhaps  a  goodly  num- 
ber, whose  minds  were  sobered  by  the  challenge,  whose 
faces  took  on  a  more  serious  and  determined  expression 

242 


THE       TOWER       BUILDER 

from  that  hour,  and  who  listened  with  intense  earnestness 
to  the  further  unfoldment  of  his  thought.  But  whether 
men  heard  or  rejected  them,  the  words  abide  as  the 
permanent  utterance  of  the  Christ  to  every  age.  They 
come  to  us  in  this  far-off  time  to  startle  us  with  the 
thrill  of  an  electric  shock,  to  shatter  all  easy-going  or 
superficial  ideals  and  to  stimulate  the  spirit  of  inquiry 
and  deepened  consecration. 

What  does  Jesus  mean?  Does  he  teach  us  to  despise 
natural  affection,  and  condition  his  service  upon  the 
heartless  smothering  of  filial  love?  Must  the  instinc- 
tive affections  of  the  heart  be  sternly  and  even  cruelly 
repressed  in  order  that  we  may  attain  to  spiritual  life? 
Does  the  highest  sainthood  involve  treason  to  the  dearest 
relations  of  life,  and  the  utter  destruction  of  the  tender- 
est  emotions  of  which  the  human  heart  is  capable?  God 
forbid !  The  entire  course  of  human  progress  under  the 
light  of  gospel  teaching  renders  any  such  interpretation 
absurd.  With  the  growth  of  Christliness  in  the  soul  hu- 
man love  grows  ever  deeper,  stronger,  more  tender,  more 
intense.  There  are  those  who  extol  the  filial  reverence 
of  the  Chinese  and  other  unchristian  peoples ;  still  the 
fact  remains  that  paganism  discloses  no  such  examples 
of  love  between  husband  and  wife,  between  parent  and 
child,  between  brother  and  sister,  as  is  the  common  ex- 
perience of  "Christian  society.  If,  now  and  again,  there 
is  manifested  some  development  of  religious  zeal  in  the 
name  of  a  higher  spiritual  life  that  stifles  natural  af- 
fection, it  soon  proves  itself  to  be  a  devil-born  monstros- 
ity. True  Christliness,  I  repeat,  deepens  and  intensi- 
fies the  natural  affections  by  the  very  power  of  that  su- 
preme love  to  which  these  are  subordinated ;  yet  all  their 
tenderness  and  beauty  are  as  hate  itself  when  contrasted 
with  the  soul's  loyalty  to  its  divine  Master.  If  for  a  mo- 
ment they  conflict  with  that,  they  must  be  laid  upon  the 
altar  and  consumed.  It  is  thus  from  the  ashes  of  self- 
imm.olation  that  there  has  sprung  a  chastened,  humble, 

243 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

obedient  love  that  is  immeasurably  stronger  and  purer 
than  any  love  can  be  when  wedded  to  self-will. 

A  startling  utterance  truly  is  this  of  our  Lord,  yet 
one  that  has  been  vindicated  times  without  number  in 
the  history  of  all  godly  living,  from  the  day  when  mis- 
guided Abraham  laid  his  son  on  the  altar  at  Moriah  to 
the  modern  era  of  missionary  devotion  when  a  Mary 
Reed  surrenders  the  love  and  joy  of  a  beautiful  Chris- 
tian home  in  order  that  she  may  devote  her  life  to  the 
comforting  and  salvation  of  lepers  in  India.  True,  the 
actual  requirement  of  such  heartrending  sacrifice  may 
be  rare,  but  the  spirit  of  it  must  be  universal.  The  readi- 
ness to  obey  such  a  call  is  the  token  of  genuine  disciple- 
ship,  the  condition  ,of  all  highest  moral  and  spiritual 
attainment. 

Only  for  the  shallow  and  half-hearted  who  turn  back 
from  his  service  is  this  challenge  of  the  Master  left  in 
its  original  sharpness  and  uncertainty.  For  those  who 
remain  to  hear  more,  there  are  parables  which  make  his 
meaning  clear,  his  utterance  reasonable.  These  parables 
are  two  in  number,  (i)  the  parable  of  The  Tower 
Builder,  and  (2)  the  parable  of  The  Warring  King.  Al- 
though brief  in  form  and  incomplete  in  structure,  these 
sketches  are  as  really  parables  as  several  others  that  are 
much  better  known.  In  their  interrogative  and  frag- 
mentary form  they  resemble  the  parables  of  The  Lost 
Sheep  and  The  Lost  Coin.  Like  those,  also,  they  present 
similarity  of  outward  features  with  an  important  distinc- 
tion of  inner  meaning.  Clearly  there  are  truths  common 
to  the  two,  but  they  are  not  therefore  identical  or  rep- 
etitious. Both  suggest  the  necessity  of  intelligent  fore- 
sight. Both  emphasize  the  difficulties  of  discipleship. 
Both  appeal  to  the  spirit  of  struggle,  the  strong  and  man- 
ly element  in  human  nature.  But  the  one,  the  parable 
of  The  Tower  Builder,  views  discipleship  from  its  self- 
ward  side  as  the  attainment  of  sainthood,  the  cultivation 
of   a   truly    Christlike   character;   while    the    other,   the 

244 


THE       TOWER        BUILDER 

parable  of  The  Warring  King,  contemplates  the  Chris- 
tian life  from  the  view-point  of  service,  of  aggressive 
effort  for  the  building  up  of  God's  kingdom  in  the  earth. 

At  present  we  are  concerned  only  with  the  parable 
of  The  Tower  Builder.  "Which  of  you,"  says  the  Mas- 
ter, "desiring  to  build  a  tower,  doth  not  first  sit  down  and 
count  the  cost,  whether  he  have  wherewith  to  complete 
it?" 

To  the  most  superficial  hearer  the  parable  utters  its 
ringing  message,  "Count  the  Cost."  It  is  first  of  all  a 
challenge  to  thoughtful  and  intelligent  foresight.  It  is 
a  warning  against  hasty  and  unconsidered  action.  It  be- 
speaks for  the  spiritual  life  that  same  care,  that  far-sight- 
ed wisdom,  that  personal  preparation,  that  earnestness, 
which  are  so  essential  in  the  success  of  any  enterprise. 
It  will  not  do  to  leave  the  religious  life  to  the  chance 
of  impulse  or  emotion  while  we  give  to  secular  affairs; 
our  profoundest  thought  and  care. 

To  enter  the  service  of  the  Christ  is  indeed  an  im- 
mediate and  an  imperative  duty  for  all;  yet  it  is  a  su- 
premely serious  matter.  In  the  noble  words  of  the  an- 
cient marriage  service,  "It  is  not  by  any  to  be  entered 
into  unadvisedly  or  lightly;  but  reverently,  discreetly, 
advisedly,  soberly,  and  in  the  fear  of  God."  No  one 
should  undertake  such  a  service  without  profound  and 
prayerful  consideration.  This  does  not  imply  delay.  It 
does  not  excuse  procrastination.  For  the  most  thought- 
ful and  far-sighted  business  man  is  sure  to  be  most 
prompt  in  action.  It  does,  however,  imply  honest  in- 
quiry, serious  attention.  It  implies  the  weighing  of  com- 
parative values,  the  estimating  of  possibilities  and  desires, 
the  forming  of  permanent  and  life-controlling  purposes. 
These  may  be  done  quickly,  but  they  should  be  done 
thoroughly. 

More  deliberate  and  thoughtful  consecration  is  one  of 
the  crying  needs  of  the  modern  religious  life.  We  are 
too  superficial.     We  take  too  many  things  for  granted. 

245 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

We  do  not  bring  ourselves  face  to  face  with  the  great 
problems  and  demands  of  the  Christian  life.  We  do  not 
take  a  large  and  clear  view  of  its  possiblities  in  attain- 
ment and  service.  We  satisfy  ourselves  with  little  where 
much  is  offered.  We  need  to  hear  as  clearly  as  did  that 
curious  multitude  the  first  challenge  of  this  Tower 
Builder — "Count  the  cost." 

But  I  have  said  that  he  has  a  more  direct  and  specific 
message  for  us,  a  message  distinctively  his  own.  This 
parable  turns  our  thought  more  especially  to  the  person- 
al or  selfward  aim  of  discipleship.  Every  disciple  is 
called  to  be  as  well  as  to  do — to  be  in  order  that  he  may 
do.  Attainment  is  as  vital  to  the  Christian  life  as 
achievement,  and  it  is  first.  The  great  work  accom- 
plished by  a  Peter,  a  Paul,  an  Augustine,  a  Luther,  in 
saving  others  or  in  redeeming  society  has  only  been  com- 
mensurate with  the  work  wrought  in  each  by  the  Holy 
Spirit.  They  were  called  to  be  saints  before  they  were 
called  to  make  saints ;  and  their  mighty  influence  in  the 
conversion  of  men  was  at  once  the  result  and  the  means 
of  their  own  sanctification. 

The  first  call  of  God  to  every  man  is  the  call  to  be  a 
saint,  i.  e..  to  the  completeness  of  moral  and  spiritual 
victory  in  his  own  soul.  We  cannot  drive  the  world 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but  we  can  lead  it  there. 
Too  often  we  forget  this.  To  an  eager  young  reformer. 
Count  Tolstoi  once  said,  "Young  man,  you  sweat  too 
much  blood  for  the  world ;  sweat  some  for  yourself  first. 
...  If  you  want  to  make  the  world  better,  you  have  to  be 
the  best  you  can,  .  .  .  you  cannot  bring  the  kingdom  of 
God  into  the  world  until  you  bring  it  into  your  own  heart 
first."  God's  word  echoes  in  each  of  those  pregnant 
sentences.  Our  Lord  was  always  very  emphatic  in 
declaring  the  necessity  of  personal  attainment  first,  not 
for  its  own  sake  alone,  but  as  a  prelude  to  work  for 
others. 

It  is  this  selfward  effort,  this  struggle  for  saintliness 

246 


THE       TOWER       BUILDER 

of  character,  which  Jesus  represents  under  the  figure  of 
a  Tower  Builder.  Architecture  always  represents  that 
when  used  as  a  type  of  the  spiritual.  The  mason  is  the 
universal  man,  and  the  structure  that  he  rears  is  a  fit- 
ting symbol  of  that  most  noble  of  all  creations,  the  human 
character. 

"All  are  architects  of  fate, 
Working  in  these  walls  of  time," 

sings  the  poet,  and  he  is  but  repeating  in  slightly  dif- 
ferent form  the  declaration  of  the  apostle,  "Ye  are  the 
temple  of  God." 

What  more  glorious,  and  at  the  same  time,  what  more 
appalling  task  can  you  conceive  than  this — the  attainmenl 
of  a  saintly  character!  To  stand  face  to  face  with  an 
Abraham,  or  with  a  Paul,  or  with  a  John,  yes,  to  stand 
face  to  face  with  Jesus  himself,  and  to  realize,  "This  is 
what  I  want  to  be,  what  I  must  be" — does  it  not  suggest 
an  almost  hopeless  task?  Here  is  a  rude  fisherman, 
Peter,  bigoted,  ignorant,  fickle,  profane.  The  call 
sounds  in  his  ears  one  day  as  the  Master  walks  by  the 
Sea  of  Galilee,  "Follow  me,  and  become  Saint  Peter,  the 
steadfast,  the  holy,  the  loving,  the  self-sacrificing,  the 
martyr."  Could  the  rude  fisherman  have  seen  at  the 
moment  of  his  enlistment  some  noble  saint,  the  exact 
counterpart  of  what  he  himself  was  to  become,  doubt- 
less he  would  have  felt  that  such  attainment  was  beyond 
his  utmost  hope.  So  does  every  thoughtful  disciple  feel 
as  he  contemplates  the  lives  that  have  attained  while  he 
is  only  just  beginning  his  course. 

Yes,  sainthood  or  the  perfect  life  is  indeed  an  ap- 
palling aim,  but  not  therefore  impossible  or  ridiculous. 
It  is  a  goal  which  every  earnest  soul  should  seriously 
consider.  Of  those  who  fail  to  attain,  the  majority  do 
so,  not  because  they  have  really  been  unable  to  accom- 
plish the  task  set  before  them,  but  because  they  have 

247 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

never  seriously  undertaken  it.  They  have  entered  upon 
the  Christian  hfe  with  Uttle  consideration  of  its  profound 
significance.  They  have  never  counted  the  cost  nor 
caught  any  worthy  vision  of  that  upon  which  the  cost 
must  be  reckoned.  The  goal  has  been  but  dimly  outlined 
to  their  eyes,  if  indeed  it  has  been  seen  at  all. 

Now  the  wise  tower  builder  seeks  first  of  all  to  get 
a  very  clear  and  accurate  idea  of  the  tower  which  he 
must  build.  He  studies  with  the  utmost  care  every  de- 
tail of  location,  form,  size,  materials,  etc.  Only  after 
he  has  determined  all  these  matters  can  he  proceed  to 
estimate  the  cost  of  building.  No  calculation  is  possible 
until  he  has  decided  whether  the  tower  shall  be  of  wood 
or  of  stone,  whether  it  shall  be  fifty  feet  or  one  hundred 
feet  in  height,  whether  it  shall  be  round  or  square,  and 
many  other  facts. 

So,  too,  will  the  wise  disciple  endeavor  to  form  some 
adequate  notion  of  the  character  which  he  must  attain. 
He  will  not  be  satisfied  with  popular  and  general 
ideals  of  Christian  living  or  with  conventional  standards 
of  conduct.  He  will  study  for  himself  the  very  words 
of  Jesus.  He  will  contemplate  the  perfect  life.  And 
he  will  consider  soberly  the  sufficiency  of  his  resources 
and  the  strength  of  his  purpose  for  such  attainment. 

I  do  not  wonder  that  many  a  soul  halts  on  the  thresh- 
old of  surrender  to  Christ  with  the  question,  "Can  I 
hold  out  ?"  I  do  not  wonder  that  the  heart  of  the  thought- 
ful man  well-nigh  fails  him  as  he  begins  to  realize  the 
magnitude  of  the  task.  To  be  a  saint — that  is  a  great 
undertaking.  To  be  a  true  and  worthy  son  of  God,  to 
reflect  the  image  and  spirit  of  Christ  in  human  society, 
in  short,  to  be  what  a  Christian  ought  to  be  always  and 
everywhere,  is  an  enterprise  that  surpasses  the  unaided 
strength  of  man.  Well  may  one  pause  at  the  outset  and 
seriously  ask  himself  whether  he  is  sufficient  for  these 
things. 

But  however  appalling  the  task  may  seem,  it  is  pre- 

248 


THE        TOWER        BUILDER 

cisely  the  task  to  which  we  are  called.  "Ye  therefore 
shall  be  perfect,"  is  the  unqualified  declaration  of  Jesus, 
involving  at  once  a  promise  and  a  command.  And, 
after  all,  could  we  content  ourselves  with  less  than  per- 
fection? Is  not  this  just  the  aim  and  just  the  task  that 
marks  us  as  true  men  and  women?  Is  it  not  essential 
to  our  very  manhood  and  womanhood?  Clearly  it  is 
involved  in  our  nature.  It  is  not  an  artificial  or  an  ex- 
tra requirement  foisted  upon  us  by  religion. 

Side  by  side,  therefore,  with  the  question,  ''Can  I  hold 
out?"  there  should  arise  in  every  mind  another  question, 
viz.,  "Can  I  afford  not  to  try?"  Are  not  the  whole 
meaning  and  value  of  my  manhood  involved  in  the  try- 
ing ?     Ah,  we  often  forget  this  question ! 

Having  determined  the  nature  of  the  tower  to  be 
built,  there  arises  next  in  order  the  question  as  to  its 
necessity  and  the  resources  from  which  it  is  to  be  built. 
At  this  point  the  parable  falls  short  of  absolute  parallel- 
ism. The  building  of  a  tower  must  be  in  some  sense 
optional  with  any  man.  There  may  be  a  question  on 
the  one  hand  of  the  necessity  or  the  desire  to  build,  and 
on  the  other  of  the  ability  to  meet  the  expense  involved. 
In  the  matter  of  Christian  character,  however,  neither 
of  these  questions  can  properly  arise.  The  perfect  char- 
acter is  not  an  optional  attainment.  It  is  a  vital  necessity. 
Failing  to  attain  this  we  fail  in  the  fundamental  purpose 
of  life.  No  true  man  or  women  will  be  satisfied  for  a 
moment  with  any  less  perfect  ideal.  The  Christian  saint 
is  the  only  complete  man,  the  only  perfect  woman. 

NOr,  in  the  spiritual  life,  is  there  any  real  question  of 
our  ability  to  meet  the  cost  of  building.  Doubtless  many 
a  disciple  who  starts  well  in  the  Christian  life  quickly 
becomes  discouraged  and  fails  at  the  last  to  reach  the 
goal  of  sainthood.  But  this  comes,  not  to  those  who 
have  counted  the  cost  and  found  it  excessive,  but  to  those 
who  have  entered  upon  the  Christian  life  thoughtlessly. 
Holiness  of  life  and  perfection  of  character  are  not,  as 

249 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

the  theologians  would  have  us  believe,  ideals  quite  beyond 
the  power  of  human  attainment.  They  simply  express 
the  limit  of  our  resources  when  wisely  and  faithfully 
employed.  The  doctrine  of  "moral  inability"  shrivels 
and  vanishes  when  touched  with  Paul's  manly  excla- 
mation, *T  can  do  all  things  through  Christ  which 
strengtheneth  me."  Holiness  is  practicable,  perfection  is 
possible  to  the  weakest  child  who  takes  Christ  for  his 
helper.  Every  man  has  "sufficient  to  finish"  if  he  does 
not  waste  his  spiritual  patrimony  or  neglect  to  use  his 
resources  faithfully. 

The  injunction  to  count  the  cost,  does  not,  therefore, 
imply  any  uncertainty  as  to  man's  absolute  ability  to 
meet  all  God's  requirements  in  the  manner  of  life  or 
service.  It  only  implies  that  without  careful  forethought 
and  an  intelligent  estimate  of  the  magnitude  of  our  task 
we  may  so  waste  our  own  power  or  so  fail  to  lay  hold 
of  the  divine  agencies  placed  at  our  disposal  that  our 
task  shall  be  incomplete  at  last.  He  who  in  a  superficial 
or  thoughtless  manner  assumes  that  he  has  power  to 
achieve  perfection  will  assuredly  fall  short  of  it.  But  he 
who,  in  all  humility  and  weakness,  counts  the  cost  and 
enters  upon  his  task  relying  upon  God  will  no  less  surely 
succeed.  The  most  perfect  men  I  have  known  are  not 
found  among  the  ranks  of  the  so-called  "perfectionists." 
They  have  not  been  the  professors  of  holiness,  glib- 
tongued  and  shallow-minded.  They  have  rather  been 
men  who  utterly  disclaim  all  personal  holiness  and  even 
deny  the  possibility  of  such  attainment. 

Moses,  hot-headed  and  self-reliant,  makes  a  signal 
failure  as  a  champion  of  oppressed  Israel,  and  is  obliged 
to  flee  for  his  life  and  to  hide  away  in  the  desert.  Is 
he  therefore  unequal  to  so  great  a  task?  No.  After 
forty  years  of  discipline  and  humiliation,  when  he  is  so 
distrustful  of  self  that  he  hesitates  even  to  obey  the  rec- 
ognized call  of  God,  he  goes  forth  to  a  greatness  of 
achievement  unsurpassed  in  all  the  ages.    Not  only  does 

250 


THE        TOWER        BUILDER 

he  become  the  emancipator  of  his  race,  but  he  gives  laws 
which  have  shaped  the  life  of  mankind  in  every  subse- 
quent age. 

D'Israeli  rises  in  Parliament  with  all  the  confidence 
and  superficiality  of  youth,  and  his  speech  is  hooted  by 
those  present.  Defeat  and  mortification  sober  his  mind 
and  cause  him  to  measure  the  cost  of  success  more  ac- 
curately. After  this  he  presses  on  till  he  becomes  the 
foremost  figure  in  the  House,  the  leader  of  the  govern- 
ment, the  most  potent  force  in  determining  the  policy 
and  directing  the  activities  of  the  empire. 

It  is  the  spirit  of  carefulness  and  foresight,  of  self- 
distrust  and  humility,  that  conquers  the  greatest  diffi- 
culties of  life  and  brings  perfection  within  our  reach. 
Failure,  imperfection,  defeat,  these  are  chiefly  the  result 
of  neglect  and  carelessness.  The  face  of  your  true  saint  is 
never  the  unwrinkled,  care-free  face  of  a  child,  but 
rather  bears  the  deep  furrows  of  trial,  the  strong  lines 
of  thought  and  effort — 

"As  if  the  man  had  fixed  his  face, 
In  many  a  solitary  place, 
Against  the  wind  and  open  sky." 

Such  are  the  only  really  beautiful  faces. 

Difficult,  indeed,  but  quite  possible,  this  task  which  is 
laid  upon  us.  In  this  fact  lies  the  meaning  of  the  last 
part  of  the  parable,  "When  he  hath  laid  the  foundation, 
and  is  not  able  to  finish,  all  that  behold  begin  to  mock 
hirn."  How  true  to  life  is  the  picture!  Mockery  and 
ridicule  are  the  inevitable  penalty  of  such  failure. 
If  we  fail  because  our  task  is  impossible,  the  laugh  is  on 
God.  That  we  fail  when  it  is  possible  turns  the  laugh 
upon  ourselves. 

The  Christian  worker  of  modern  times  often  strives  to 
belittle  the  difficulties  of  the  Christian  life,  to  qualify 
the  demands  of  the  Master,  and  to  make  discipleship  ap- 

251 


THE      TEACHINGS     OF      JESUS 

pear  an  easy  thing.  Low  standards  of  attainment  are 
accepted,  and  all  notions  of  self-sacrifke  and  consecra- 
tion are  passed  over  lightly.  What  is  the  result?  What 
could  it  be  but  that  real  sainthood  should  be  rare?  Ar- 
tificial crosses  are  substituted  for  the  real  cross  of  Jesus, 
the  cross  of  complete  self-renunciation.  Certain  insig- 
nificant rules  of  life  are  laid  down,  and  these  take  the 
place  of  the  perfect  character  and  service. 

This  lowering  of  standards  and  concealing  of  diffi- 
culties were  bad  enough  if  it  accomplished  its  purpose; 
but  it  is  utterly  unpardonable  when  it  fails,  as  it  always 
does.  Instead  of  winning  men  and  filling  the  ranks  of 
discipleship,  it  brings  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  into 
contempt  with  many  of  the  strongest  minds.  The  chal- 
lenge to  manhood  and  the  spirit  of  struggle  are  wanting. 
In  the  primitive  days,  when  discipleship  involved  risk 
of  life  and  certainty  of  suflPering  and  sacrifice,  men,  the 
strongest  and  best,  flocked  to  the  standard  of  the  cross. 
But  to-day,  when  luxury  has  displaced  sacrifice  and  ease 
has  usurped  the  throne  of  service  and  consecration,  men 
are  in  the  minority  in  the  Christian  ranks.  The  mass 
of  present-day  converts  are  won  from  the  ranks  of  youth, 
and  not  a  few  prominent  Christian  workers  consider  it 
a  well-nigh  hopeless  task  to  labor  with  those  of  mature 
age. 

Never  were  the  opportunities  for  spiritual  attainment 
better  than  to-day.  Yet  such  attainment  now  as  ever  is 
conditioned  upon  earnest  forethought  and  complete  self- 
renunciation.  The  modern  crucible  may  be  different  in 
form  from  the  old,  but  gold  and  silver  are  purified  by 
fire  in  this  age  as  in  the  most  ancient  times.  No  less 
true  is  it  that  amid  all  the  changes  of  society  and  life 
character  is  wrought  out  in  the  twentieth  century  Chris- 
tian as  in  the  disciple  of  apostolic  days,  only  by  severe 
and  tireless  struggle  entered  upon  in  the  spirit  of  intel- 
ligent and  prayerful  consecration. 


?.'(2 


Courage  and 
Cowardice 


CHAPTER  XX 

Courage  and 
Cowardice 

THE    WARRING    KING 

Luke  14:31-33 

Text. — *^^  Whosoever  he  be  of  you  that  renounceih  not  all  that  he  hathy  he 

cannot  be  my  disaple.  " — Luke  14:33 

THERE  are  two  ways  in  which  we  may  look  at 
the  work  of  Jesus.  On  the  one  hand,  we 
may  see  in  it  an  infinite  sacrifice  made  for  us 
and  which  leaves  nothing  to  be  done  hy  us 
but  to  receive  and  enjoy.  On  the  other,  we 
may  see  it  as  a  model  for  our  imitation,  a  force  for  our 
inspiration,  calling  upon  us  to  follow  in  his  footsteps  and 
thus  to  work  out  our  own  salvation  and  perform  our  part 
in  the  salvation  of  the  race.  According  to  the  one  view, 
the  gospel  becomes  a  sort  of  spiritual  anesthetic,  lulling 
the  soul  into  a  selfish  and  fatal  slumber.  According  to 
the  other,  it  sounds  a  clarion  note  of  challenge  to  our 
strongest  manhood,  our  most  devoted  womanhood,  the 
manly  response  to  which  is  fraught  with  blessing  to  the 
world. 

Many  there  are  who  delight  to  sing, 

"Jesus  paid  it  all." 

and  to  so  interpret  that  hymn  that  it  leaves  nothing  to 
be  done  by  themselves.  Others,  rejoicing  in  what  they 
believe  to  be  a  true  Christian  experience,  have  sung — 

"My  willing  soul  would  stay 
In  such  a  frame  as  this, 

255 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

And  sit  and  sing  herself  away 
To  everlasting  bliss." 

But  that  is  not  Christianity  as  Christ  taught  it.  Rather 
is  it  what  some  one  has  appropriately  styled,  "Sanctified 
selfishness." 

In  contrast  with  this  spirit  Jesus  himself  exhausts  the 
resources  of  language  to  make  his  message  a  challenge 
instead  of  a  soporific.  Plainness  of  speech  and  vividness 
of  parable  combine  to  picture  the  exceeding  greatness 
of  the  labor  which  his  service  demands.  In  extravagance 
of  statement  he  outdoes  the  pessimist;  yet  he  utters 
every  challenge  with  an  air  of  confidence  that  it  will  be 
accepted  and  that  the  acceptance  will  be  vindicated  by 
success.  In  his  darkest  pictures  there  is  the  ring,  not 
of  hopelessness,  but  of  expectation.  He  does  not  be- 
lieve that  his  hearers  will  be  terrified  or  discouraged. 
He  is  very  sure  that  deep  down  in  the  heart  of  every  man 
there  is  a  spirit  that  responds  to  just  such  appeals,  a 
heroic  element  that  needs  great  trial  to  bring  it  out  and 
to  make  it  the  dominant  element  of  his  being. 

Is  not  this  one  secret  of  Jesus'  power  to  win  men  and 
to  save  them,  that  he  calls  out  the  divine  in  man  by 
presenting  a  divine  task  for  his  accomplishment?  He 
develops  spiritual  courage  by  taxing  that  courage  to  the 
utmost.  He  cultivates  spiritual  power  by  stimulating 
the  strenuous  exercise  of  that  power.  It  is  "deep  call- 
ing unto  deep" — the  deep  things  of  God  calling  unto  the 
deep  forces  in  man;  the  deep  necessities  of  life  calling 
unto  the  deep  sympathies  of  the  human  heart;  the  deep 
revelations  of  duty  and  of  possibility  calling  unto  the 
deep  spirit  of  consecration  and  sacrifice  in  the  accom- 
plishment of  Christly  service. 

In  the  parable  of  The  Tower  Builder,  we  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  task  that  lies  before  every  man  who  would 
fulfil  the  Christian  ideal  of  sainthood.  Sobered  by  a 
vision  of  the  greatness  of  the  completed  task,  we  are 

256 


THE       WARRING        KING 

bidden  carefully  to  count  the  cost  before  we  begin,  that 
we  may  not  abandon  the  task  in  discouragement  when 
it  is  partially  done.  And  now  in  the  parable  of  The 
Warring  King,  we  have  a  similar  treatment  of  aggres- 
sive Christian  service.  The  magnitude  of  the  service  re- 
quired is  set  over  against  the  limited  resources  of  the 
servant,  with  the  corresponding  alternative  of  struggle 
or  surrender.  The  parable  is  no  less  profoundly  and  dis- 
tinctly significant  than  the  one  which  immediately  pre- 
cedes it. 

"What  king,"  says  the  great  Teacher,  "as  he  goeth 
to  encounter  another  king  in  war,  will  not  sit  down  first 
and  take  counsel  whether  he  is  able  with  ten  thousand 
to  meet  him  that  comcth  against  him  with  twenty  thou- 
sand ?" 

Could  the  most  confirmed  pessimist  present  a  more 
doleful  picture  of  the  comparative  adaptation  of  our 
forces  to  the  task  which  devolves  upon  us?  Is  not  that 
the  continual  cry  of  unfaithful  souls  ? — "The  work  is  too 
great !  It  is  quite  beyond  our  powers !  We  can  never 
do  it !"  Think  of  it.  Twenty  thousand  to  conquer  and 
only  ten  thousand  to  do  it  with !  The  odds  are  great, 
almost  overwhelming.  Yet  is  it,  after  all,  an  exaggera- 
tion? Is  it  not  a  perfectly  truthful  picture  of  the  real- 
ity which  confronts  us  every  day?  No  intellig-ent  man 
can  thoughtfully  estimate  the  tasks  of  life  and  the  re- 
sources of  human  wisdom  and  might  without  feeling 
that  the  apparent  force  is  utterly  inadequate  to  the  de- 
mand. So  much  to  do  and  so  little  with  which  to  do 
it;  that  is  not  exaggeration  but  sober  truth. 

Is  this  picture  necessarily  disheartening  therefore? 
Not  by  any  means.  Rather  is  it  inspiriting.  The  world's 
greatest  victories  have  been  those  of  the  ten  thousand 
over  the  twenty  thousand.  Such  victories  have  marked 
every  important  step  of  human  progress.  Few  are  the 
great  triumphs  of  truth  and  righteousness  that  have  been 
won  in  equal  battle.    Witness  some  of  the  principal  way- 

257 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

marks  of  liberty.  On  the  plain  of  Marathon  a  mere  hand- 
ful of  Greeks  fought  with  more  than  ten  times  their  num- 
ber of  Persians  and  drove  them  into  the  sea.  On  the 
historic  field  of  Sempach  a  few  brave  Switzers  made  way 
for  liberty  by  defeating  Austria's  strong  army.  At 
Lexington  the  "embattled  farmers"  fired  the  shot  that 
seemed  at  the  time  to  invite  destruction,  but  in  the  end 
meant  victory  over  the  armies  of  Great  Britain.  Many 
and  marvelous  have  been  the  triumphs  won  for  God  and 
humanity  by  the  fearless  confronting  of  the  twenty  thou- 
sand by  the  ten. 

Nor  is  such  conflict  without  its  special  attraction  to  the 
heroic  spirit.  A  Horatius  does  not  wait  long  for  a  re- 
sponse to  his  challenge — 

"And  how  can  man  die  better 
Than  facing  fearful  odds 
For  the  ashes  of  his  fathers 
And  the  temples  of  his  gods  ?" 

Though  the  "odds"  were  three  against  thousands,  two 
men  sprang  to  his  side  in  a  m.oment  ready  to  dare  and 
to  die  if  need  be  in  defense  of  their  city.  They  did  not 
die;  but  living  and  triumphant  they  won  immortality. 

For  such  odds  heroic  souls  are  ever  ready  to  volunteer 
when  a  Lieutenant  Home  would  carry  bags  of  gunpov/- 
der  in  the  very  face  of  the  enemy  to  blow  up  the  Cash- 
mere gate  at  the  siege  of  Delhi,  or  when  a  Hobson  would 
lead  a  desperate  enterprise  to  bottle  up  the  Spanish  fleet 
in  the  harbor  of  Santiago.  In  such  emergencies  the  dif- 
ficulty is,  not  to  secure  a  sufficient  number  of  volunteers 
for  the  service,  but  to  select  the  small  number  required 
from  the  many  who  offer  themselves.  And,  be  it  ob- 
served that  the  three  in  alliance  with  a  favoring  Provi- 
dence have  again  and  again  obtained  complete  victory 
over  the  host,  the  ten  thousand  in  defense  of  highest 
truth  have  put  the  twenty  thousand  to  flight 

258 


THE        WARRING        KING 

The  parable  of  The  Warring  King  is,  as  I  have  said, 
a  parable  of  aggressive  Christian  service.  It  is  a  picture 
of  the  struggle  between  the  forces  of  righteousness  and 
the  powers  of  evil,  between  the  kingdom  of  heaven  and 
the  realm  of  darkness.  Better  still,  it  is  a  picture  of  the 
task  that  falls  to  the  individual  disciple  who  takes  his  part 
in  the  redemption  of  the  world.  The  representation  is 
not  general  but  specific,  not  collective  but  individual. 
Jesus  is  not  representing  the  task  which  rests  upon  the 
shoulders  of  the  Church  or  of  the  apostles  alone.  To 
every  student  of  the  parable  he  says,  "This  is  the  task 
that  falls  to  you  if  you  are  to  be  accounted  worthy  to 
bear  my  name." 

Look  at  the  world  around  you,  the  community  in 
which  you  live,  the  circle  of  acquaintance  and  influence 
in  which  you  move.  Do  not  opportunities  arise  on  every 
hand?  Do  not  evils  challenge  you  without  number?  Do 
not  tasks  great  and  manifold  challenge  achievement?  Is 
there  not  work  sufficient  for  a  spiritual  Hercules  that 
cries  out  to  be  done?  But  you  look  at  your  resources 
of  spiritual  power,  of  wisdom,  of  experience,  and  you 
feel  that  they  are  totally  inadequate.  Your  forces  are 
but  as  ten  thousand  while  the  hosts  of  wrong  number 
twenty  thousand.  It  may  be  even  worse.  You  are  sin- 
gle-handed, perhaps,  while  it  is  a  vast  army  that  threat- 
ens. I  do  not  deny  the  disparity  of  forces.  That  is 
common  enough  and  you  do  well  to  recognize  it;  yes. 
to  consider  it  soberly.  Were  you  unconscious  of  it  or 
blind  to  its  significance  there  were  little  hope  of  victory. 
Sober  forethought  is  an  essential  condition  of  ultimate 
success,  since  that  alone  can  make  us  truly  wise  in  the 
employment  of  our  resources. 

Let  us  face  all  the  facts  intelligently  but  courageously. 
To  set  ten  thousand  in  array  against  twenty  thousand 
were  simply  to  invite  certain  defeat,  all  other  conditions 
being  equal.  The  ten  thousand  can  conquer  only  when 
they  have  some  other  commensurate  advantage  which 

259 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

shall  outweigh  the  disparity  in  numbers.  Horatius  and 
his  two  friends  held  the  thousands  at  bay  because  they 
took  advantage  of  a  narrow  pass  where  each  must  be 
attacked  singly.  Puny  man  achieves  wonders  in  conflict 
with  material  obstacles  by  allying  himself  with  the  pow- 
er of  steam  or  by  putting  himself  into  partnership  with 
other  forces  of  nature.  So  must  it  be  in  spiritual  strug- 
gle, in  moral  conflict.  The  problem  is  not  simply  as  to 
what  man  unaided  can  accomplish,  but  what  he  can  ac- 
complish in  alliance  with  the  infinite  power  of  God. 

The  ungodly  man  does  not  realize  this.  To  him  all 
forces  are  material.  Spiritual  forces  have  no  place  in  his 
calculations.  When  Moses  sends  twelve  spies  into  the 
land  of  Canaan  to  search  out  the  wealth  of  the  land  and 
to  discover  the  best  mode  of  entrance  and  conquest,  ten 
of  the  number  bring  back  an  utterly  discouraging  report. 
True,  the  land  is  rich  and  beautiful.  It  flows  with  milk 
and  honey.  In  every  particular  it  is  a  land  to  be  de- 
sired. But  the  inhabitants  are  numerous  and  strong. 
The  cities  are  walled  and  very  great.  Moreover  the 
giant  sons  of  Anak  are  there.  Against  such  a  people 
what  possible  hope  of  conquest  was  there  for  the  un- 
disciplined and  ill-trained  host  of  Israel?  Surely  any 
people  of  ordinary  intelligence  could  see  the  inequality 
of  conditions,  and  the  folly  of  such  an  attempt. 

But  Joshua  and  Caleb  give  different  counsel.  They 
urge  the  people  to  go  forward  to  the  conquest  of  the 
land.  Why  did  they  do  this  ?  Were  they  more  rash  than 
their  brethren?  Did  they  not  realize  the  magnitude  of 
the  undertaking?  Did  they  fail  to  take  account  of  the 
disparity  in  numbers  and  equipment?  No.  They  were 
intelligent  and  careful  men.  But  they  took  account  of 
one  factor  in  the  problem  that  the  ten  had  omitted  to  con- 
sider. True,  it  was  ten  thousand  against  twenty  thou- 
sand, or  worse.  That  they  grant;  but  they  add,  "The 
Lord  is  with  us:  fear  them  not."  Ah,  that  is  the  con- 
sciousness that  inspires  the  Joshuas  and  the  Calebs !  That 

260 


THE       WARRING       KING 

— that  is  the  factor  that  more  than  outweighs  greatest 
odds.  That  is  the  reenforcement  that  shall  snatch  victory 
from  impending  defeat.    The  Lord  is  with  us! 

This  vision  of  divine  power  it  was  that  enabled  Martin 
Luther  to  undertake  a  work  so  far  beyond  any  man  as 
the  Great  Reformation.  When  at  times  the  opposing 
force  seemed  about  to  overwhelm  him,  he  and  his  friend 
Philip  Melancthon  would  sing  together  that  grand  battle- 
hymn  of  the  Reformation — 

"A  mighty  fortress  is  our  God, 

A  bulwark  never  failing; 

Our  helper  he,  amid  the  flood 

Of  mortal  ills  prevailing. 


"Did  we  in  our  own  strength  confide, 

Our  striving  would  be  losing, 
Were  not  the  right  man  on  our  side, 
The  man  of  God's  own  choosing." 

Were  Luther  and  Melancthon  themselves  any  match 
for  the  tremendous  power  of  the  Church  of  Rome?  Of 
course  they  were  not.  But  laying  hold  of  the  infinite 
power  of  God  they  faced  the  appalling  odds  and  tri- 
umphed. 

So,  too,  Gustavus  Adolphus  of  Sweden  led  his  little 
army  of  fifteen  thousand  men,  at  which  all  Europe 
laughed,  against  the  vastly  greater  legions  of  Spain  and 
Austria,  and  triumphed.  Full  well  he  appreciated  the 
odds  against  which  he  was  fighting;  but  his  confident 
expectation  of  victory  grew  out  of  his  implicit  trust  in 
the  power  of  God,  and  the  consciousness  that  he  was  en- 
gaged in  his  service.  On  the  eve  of  every  battle  the  king 
in  person  led  his  army  in  prayer,  and  then  all  joined 
in  the  famous  battle-hymn  which  has  ever  since  borne 
his  name — 

261 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

"Fear  not,  O  little  flock,  the  foe 
Who  madly  seeks  your  overthrow ; 
Dread  not  his  rage  and  power; 
What  though  your  courage  sometimes  faints? 
His  seeming  triumph  o'er  God's  saints 
Lasts  but  a  little  hour. 

"As  true  as  God's  own  word  is  true. 
Not  earth  nor  hell  with  all  their  crew 

Against  us  shall  prevail; 
A  jest  and  by-word  are  they  grown; 
God  is  with  us,  we  are  his  own, 

Our  victory  cannot  fail." 

Was  the  Swedish  king  reckless  to  undertake  so  unequal 
a  task  ?  The  result  proves  that  he  was  not.  Though  his 
army  was  small  he  was  in  alliance  with  Omnipotence  and 
failure  was  impossible. 

Almost  every  page  of  history  offers  its  illustration 
for  our  theme.  What  matter  the  odds,  if  we  are  work- 
ing together  with  God,  if  we  have  his  power  added  to 
our  own  ?  Set  a  stripling  David  against  a  giant  of  Gath 
and  he  slays  him — ^for  "the  battle  is  the  Lord's."  Set 
a  John  Knox  against  the  rulers  of  Scotland  and  England 
with  the  pope  and  bishops  at  their  back,  and  he  will  come 
off  conqueror — for  "the  battle  is  the  Lord's."  Set  a  John 
Brown  against  the  entrenched  hosts  of  slavery  and  mam- 
mon, and  though  he  die  on  the  scaffold,  yet  will  he  tri- 
umph and  his  very  scaffold  will  be  transfigured  with 
glory — for  "the  battle  is  the  Lord's."  Set  a  Toussaint 
L'Ouverture  against  the  veteran  legions  of  Napoleon, 
and  though  he  may  languish  in  a  French  prison,  the  free- 
dom of  Hayti  is  secure — for  "the  battle  is  the  Lord's." 

Never  forget  this  item  in  the  account.  One  against 
a  multitude?  Ten  thousand  against  twenty  thousand? 
So  it  may  seem  to  the  eyes  that  have  never  been  en- 
lightened, to  the  ignorant,  the  skeptic.     Lord,  open  his 


THE       WARRING       KING 

eyes  that  he  may  see,  and  straightway  the  mountainside 
shall  swarm  with  horses  and  chariots  uncounted.  One 
with  God  is  always  a  majority.  That  is  no  empty  prov- 
erb, no  hyperbole.  It  is  literal  truth.  Can  a  man  unaided 
lift  a  block  of  granite  of  a  ton's  weight  ?  No.  But  with 
the  help  of  God,  in  other  words,  by  taking  advantage  of 
certain  natural  laws  and  forces,  a  child  may  lift  many 
tons.  There  are  moral  and  spiritual  weights  far  beyond 
our  strength,  but  with  the  aid  of  the  divine  forces  at 
our  command  we  may  easily  remove  them.  Make  al- 
liance with  God.  Put  yourself  into  harmony  with  the 
great  spiritual  laws  through  which  he  works  and  there 
is  no  spiritual  task  so  great  that  you  need  fear  to  under- 
take it. 

Now  for  the  remainder  of  the  parable.  I  had  almost 
forgotten  that ;  yet  we  must  not  wholly  neglect  it.  Jesus 
suggests  an  alternative  to  this  picture  of  struggle  and 
victory.  What  is  it?  "Or  else."  There  is  a  great  deal 
involved  in  those  two  words,  "or  else."  "Or  else,  while 
the  other  is  yet  a  great  way  off,  he  sendeth  an  ambassage, 
and  asketh  conditions  of  peace."  For  shame !  The  cow- 
ard! He  does  not  even  wait  till  his  enemy  is  close  at 
hand  and  the  danger  imminent.  Before  he  even  knows 
that  he  has  twenty  thousand  men,  while  all  his  force  and 
purpose  are  still  mere  matters  of  rumor,  he  sends  to  him 
in  the  most  abject  fashion  and  suffers  him  to  dictate 
terms  of  surrender. 

Very  little  respect  have  we  for  a  king  who  would  show 
himself  so  weak  and  cowardly  as  that.  Nevertheless  he 
has  only  too  many  representatives  in  the  Christian 
Church.  Are  we  not  all  of  us  continually  making  con- 
cessions to  distant  and  imaginary  evil?  In  politics,  in 
commerce,  in  society,  disciples  are  continually  yielding 
their  principles  and  making  compromises  with  worldli- 
ness  and  sin,  not  because  they  have  been  forced  to  do  so 
by  defeat  after  manful  struggle,  but  because  while  the 

263 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

enemy  was  yet  a  great  way  off  they  have  sent  offers  of 
submission  and  tribute. 

"What  will  people  say?"  is  the  terrible  question  that 
terrifies  many  a  disciple  who  would  like  to  take  a  stand 
for  some  principle  of  righteousness.  Most  of  us  do  not 
wait  till  "people"  say  anything ;  but  long  before  they  be- 
gin to  talk  or  have  any  occasion  for  speech  we  send  our 
ambassage  in  the  form  of  surrender  and  conformity. 
"When  we  are  in  Rome  we  must  do  as  the  Romans  do" ; 
for  are  not  the  Romans  twenty  thousand  to  our  ten  thou- 
sand ?  Surely  we  should  not  exert  any  influence  by  being 
strict  and  puritanical,  and  we  should  only  be  laughed  at 
for  our  pains.  Then  let  us  by  all  means  forestall  shame 
and  discomfort  by  prompt  concession  and  humble  com- 
pliance. 

There  is  no  middle  ground.  The  conflict  always  pre- 
sents itself  according  to  the  parable,  and  the  only  alter- 
natives are  manly  battle  or  cowardly  surrender.  Goethe 
puts  it  concisely  and  justly — 

"You  must  either  soar  or  stoop. 
Fall  or  triumph,  stand  or  droop ; 
You  must  either  serve  or  govern. 
Must  be  slave  or  must  be  sovereign; 
Must,  in  fine,  be  lock  or  wedge, 
Must  be  anvil  or  be  sledge." 

Is  it  not  a  vivid  and  at  the  same  time  a  truthful  pic- 
ture which  our  parable  presents  to  us  ?  On  the  one  hand, 
the  magnitude  of  the  Christian  service  with  its  apparent 
disparity  of  force  and  work  appealing  to  all  that  is  no- 
blest and  strongest  in  our  manhood ;  on  the  other,  the 
one  alternative  of  cowardly  surrender  and  eternal  de- 
feat. I  say  the  picture  is  no  less  accurate  and  truthful 
than  vivid.  For  is  not  this  the  choice  that  life  continu- 
ally offers — a  manly  acceptance  of  the  challenge  to  diffi- 
cult service  with  resulting  nobility  of  achievement,  or  a 

264 


THE       WARRING        KING 

weak  surrender  with  spiritual  vassalage  and  dishonor? 
It  is  triumph  or  defeat,  noble  conquest  or  slavery,  per- 
petual compromise,  galling  tribute. 

Such  is  the  appeal  of  the  parable  to  our  minds  and 
hearts.  Shall  we  not  consider  it  soberly,  thoughtfully, 
prayerfully,  and  entering  into  trustful  alliance  with  the 
infinite  power  and  love  of  God,  discover  in  the  very 
greatness  of  our  tasks  the  pledge  of  even  greater  pos- 
sibilities that  lie  enfolded  within  our  lives? 


265 


The  Lost  Sheep 


CHAPTER  XXI 

The  Lost  Sheep 

THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD 
Matt.  18: 12-14 J   Luke  15:4-7 

Text. — "fF/iat  man  of  you  .   .   .  doth  not  Uwve  the  ninety  and 
nine  .   .   .  and  go  after  that  nvhich  is  /ostF'" — Luke  15:4 

CRITICISM  is  an  exceedingly  dangerous 
weapon.  Like  an  ill-made  gun,  its  recoil 
is  often  more  to  be  feared  than  its  dis- 
charge. Particularly  is  this  true  of  harsh 
or  censorious  criticism.  Its  most  frequent 
result  is  to  convict  the  critic  of  ignorance  or  ill  will.  Yet 
the  world  is  full  of  critics,  self-appointed,  self-sufficient. 
Volunteers  for  this  service  are  never  wanting;  the  bet- 
ter the  man  or  the  better  the  cause  the  more  numerous 
the  critics  and  the  more  bitter  the  criticism.  For  one 
Christ  there  are  always  ten  thousand  critics. 

The  critics  are  not,  however,  altogether  without  their 

use  in  the  world.    As  a  grain  of  sand  or  other  irritating 

substance  becoming  imbedded  in  the  sensitive  tissue  of 

the  oyster  causes  the  formation  of  the  priceless  pearl  in 

self-defense,  so  the  critic,  by  a  false  judgment  or  unjust 

condemnation,   may   call    forth   a    noble    utterance    of 

truth  in  refutation  of  the  same.     Many  a  vital  truth 

I  or  principle  of  action  has  been  but  indifferentlv  under- 

1    stood  until  some  attack  of  the  critics  has  sounded  the 

I    challenge  to  which  devout  scholars  have  responded  with 

an  exposition  that  has  made  the  truth  ever  afterwards 

as  clear  as  the  noonday.    So  have  the  critics  of  the  Bible 

269 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

ever  been  the  unwilling  contributors  to  a  larger  knowl- 
edge and  higher  appreciation  of  that  richest  of  all  store- 
houses of  divine  truth.  The  spears  which  they  have 
aimed  at  the  heart  of  the  gospel  have  become  spurs  in 
the  sides  of  its  defenders,  inciting  them  to  greater  ex- 
ertions in  behalf  of  truth. 

It  was  criticism  the  most  ignorant  and  unworthy  that 
drew  from  the  lips  of  Jesus  that  matchless  trio  of  para- 
bles recorded  in  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  Luke's  Gospel. 
The  Master  by  his  gracious  words  and  yet  more  gracious 
works  had  gathered  about  him  a  crowd  of  "publicans 
and  sinners."  They  were  not  a  pleasing  company  of 
men  and  women.  Doubtless  they  were  coarse,  low,  un- 
promising. Such  fellowship  would  not  commend  him 
to  the  more  respectable  and  intelligent  classes.  Naturally 
enough,  therefore,  "the  Pharisees  and  scribes  murmured, 
saying,  This  man  receiveth  sinners,  and  eateth  with 
them!" 

Had  this  criticism  been  peculiar  or  isolated,  had  it  been 
the  utterance  of  a  few  men  at  one  specific  time,  it 
might  have  passed  without  notice.  But  so  far  from 
being  that,  Jesus  recognizes  in  it  the  outcropping  of  a 
wide-spread  and  perennial  criticism  upon  all  Christly 
work,  a  criticism  that  would  be  repeated  and  reechoed  in 
subsequent  ages  by  those  who  should  call  themselves  his 
disciple-,  the  Christian  scribes  and  Pharisees.  It  is  the 
token  of  a  ceaseless  antagonism  between  human  and  di- 
vine ideals.  It  lays  bare  a  very  common  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  spirit  and  purpose  of  God  in  relation  to  man 
that  is  the  secret  of  all  false  religion.  It  touches  the 
Saviour's  mission  at  a  vital  point.  It  betrays  the  Phari- 
seeism,  not  of  that  day  only  but  of  this  day  also ;  yes,  of 
all  time. 

It  is  always  a  scandal  to  highly  respectable  and  relig- 
ious people  that  the  Christ  associates  wth  sinners.  Every 
manifestation  of  this  Christly  spirit,  every  attempt  to 
do  this  Christly  work,  is  sure  to  evoke  severe  criticism, 

270 


THE       GOOD       SHEPHERD 

and  that  not  only  from  the  ungodly  and  indifferent,  bnt 
also  and  equally  from  the  most  highly  religious,  fmrn 
the  recognized  leaders  in  the  Christian  Church.  The 
Christian  worker  of  to-day  who  pays  marked  attention 
to  the  low  and  rude  and  sinful  quickly  incurs  the  dis- 
pleasure of  the  respectable  and  the  pious— the  "unco 
guid"  as  Bums  has  called  them.  The  Salvation  Army 
and  kindred  organizations  ever  find  in  the  criticisms  of 
Christians  a  more  serious  obstacle  to  their  work  than  in 
the  rudeness  or  violence  of  the  ungodly.  So  slow  are 
we  to  appreciate  the  spirit  and  teaching  of  Jesus ! 

It  is,  therefore,  because  of  the  universality  and  per- 
sistence of  this  criticism,  that  had  only  its  beginning  with 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  that  Jesus  deigns  to  answer  it. 
And  his  reply  is  most  complete  and  thoroughgoing. 
His  argument,  unfolded  in  three  parables,  perhaps  the 
most  beautiful  and  attractive  he  ever  uttered,  is  at  once 
clear,  cumulative  and  convincing. 

First  he  sketches  briefly  and  in  a  few  strokes  the  pic- 
ture of  the  shepherd  seeking  his  lost  sheep ;  then  its  com- 
panion piece  of  the  woman  searching  for  her  lost  coin 
until  it  is  found;  and  he  concludes  with  the  complete 
story  of  the  prodigal  and  the  drudge.  These  parables 
are  not  three  different  pictures  of  one  truth,  a  mere  repe- 
tition for  the  sake  of  emphasis.  Each  picture  illustrates 
and  enforces  a  distinct  truth  or  element  of  the  truth ;  each 
is  a  separate  link  in  the  perfect  chain  of  argument ;  and, 
taken  together,  they  embody  the  threefold  answer  which 
was  necessary  to  refute  the  unjust  criticism  and  to  ex- 
pose the  error  which  gave  it  birth. 

The  first  of  these  parables,  commonly  known  as  the 
parable  of  "The  Lost  Sheep,"  will  furnish  ample  sug- 
gestion for  our  thought  in  the  present  discourse.  It  is 
not  a  complete  story,  like  so  many  other  parables.  It  is 
rather  a  literary  fragment,  a  mere  sketch,  yet  so  touch- 
ing in  its  appeal  and  so  vivid  in  its  suggestion  that  it 

271 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

has  won  a  recognition  from  expositors  that  has  often 
been  denied  to  other  and  more  complete  narratives. 

The  incident  described  was  one  famiHar  to  our  Lord's 
immediate  hearers  from  personal  observation.  It  is  fa- 
miHar to  us  from  frequent  repetition.  The  sketch  has 
become  a  household  classic  wherever  the  gospel  has  been 
preached.  No  need,  therefore,  to  explain  it.  To  add 
anything  to  it  were  impossible.  It  is  in  itself  an  exqui- 
site gem  of  divine  truth.  I  can  only  take  it  as  the  Mas- 
ter has  given  it  to  us,  and  holding  it  up  before  you  ask 
you  to  look  at  it.  "You  have  seen  it  many  times  before?" 
Then  look  at  it  once  again  and  seek,  not  for  some  new 
lesson,  but  for  a  clearer  apprehension  and  more  perfect 
appreciation  of  the  old  lesson,  of  the  only  lesson  that  the 
parable  teaches. 

Were  I  an  artist,  gifted  with  the  power  to  put  this  par- 
able in  colors  upon  the  canvas,  I  would  represent  it  as  a 
twofold  picture,  after  the  manner  of  Raphael's  "Trans- 
figuration." Below  and  in  the  background  would  appear 
a  flock  of  ninety  and  nine  sheep  feeding  quietly  and  in 
safety  on  the  hillside,  while  the  central  foreground  of 
this  lower  scene  would  present  the  figure  of  the  shep- 
herd toiling  painfully  through  the  wilderness,  fording 
swollen  torrents,  climbing  rugged  paths,  pressing  on 
through  the  underbrush  and  thorns,  to  find  a  single  lamb 
that  has  strayed  from  the  fold  and  is  lost  in  the  wild. 
Then  above  all,  the  crowning  scene  in  the  picture,  would 
be  the  representation  of  the  shepherd  returning  from 
his  successful  quest,  bearing  the  rescued  lamb  triumph- 
antly on  his  shoulders,  and  calling  upon  his  fellow  shep- 
herds to  share  in  his  joy,  with  just  a  glimpse  through  the 
rifted  sky  of  heaven's  rejoicing  over  a  ransomed  soul. 
And  this  scene  of  transcendent  gladness  should  over- 
shadow that  of  toil  and  struggle,  even  as  the  old  master's 
transfiguration  scene  eclipses  while  it  illuminates  the 
stricken  group  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain. 

Clearly  the  emphasis  of  the  sketch  is  upon  the  spirit 

372 


THE       GOOD       SHEPHERD 

of  triumphant  rejoicing  in  which  it  culminates,  which 
glorifies  all  the  rest  and  gives  it  meaning. 

In  the  search  there  has  been  severe  toil.  Not  a  little 
risk  to  life  and  limb  has  been  incurred.  The  wilderness 
is  full  of  perils  for  the  shepherd  as  well  as  for  the  sheep. 
Why,  then,  does  he  undertake  the  search  ?  Why  go  to  all 
this  trouble  for  the  sake  of  a  single  sheep?  You  answer 
at  once,  "To  save  himself  from  loss.  The  sheep  is  his 
own,  a  part  of  his  property.  Losing  it  he  would  be  the 
poorer.     Finding  it  he  is  the  richer." 

True  enough;  but  that  is  not  the  whole  story.  We 
may  put  the  case  much  more  strongly  than  that.  The 
whole  meaning  and  purpose  of  his  shepherd  life  are  in- 
volved in  this  search  and  recovery.  It  is  a  concrete  and 
vivid  definition  of  the  term,  "shepherd."  What  is  a 
shepherd  for?  To  watch  the  sheep  that  are  safely  feed- 
ing in  their  pasture  or  reposing  in  the  fold?  No.  The 
business  of  the  shepherd  is  to  guard  the  flock  from  dan- 
ger, to  keep  the  flock  from  straying,  to  rescue  any  that 
have  wandered.  In  our  own  New  England  the  safe  and 
well-fenced  pastures  have  made  shepherding  unneces- 
sary hence  the  figure  of  the  shepherd  is  unfamiliar  to 
us.  A  flock  that  can  care  for  itself  needs  no  shepherd. 
A  shepherd  that  would  remain  with  the  safe  ones  of  the 
flock  while  one  was  astray  and  exposed  to  danger  would 
be  no  shepherd.  So  I  say  the  picture  given  us  in  this 
parable  is  the  necessary  interpretation  of  the  shepherd's 
office,  the  apology  for  his  existence  as  a  shepherd. 

We  do  not  wonder  at  the  shepherd's  joy  as  he  brings 
back  the  lost  one.  It  is  joy  at  the  recovery  of  property 
that  he  feared  was  lost.  It  is  joy  in  the  addition  to  his 
wealth.  It  is  joy  because  of  calamity  averted.  But  it 
is  more.  It  is  joy  in  successful  effort.  It  is  the  joy  of 
triumph  over  threatened  adversity,  the  joy  of  victory  over 
difficult  circumstance,  the  joy  of  purpose  fulfilled,  the 
joy  of  a  flock  preserved  entire. 

And  now  the  scene  changes.     The  Judean  shepherd 

373 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

and  his  flock  gradually  disappear  from  view,  and  in  their 
place  we  see  the  Good  Shepherd  of  the  ages.  Human 
souls  are  his  only  wealth.  He  accounts  himself  the  poor- 
er for  every  one  that  is  lost.  Infinitely  more  precious  in 
his  sight  are  they  than  ever  was  his  flock  to  the  most 
faithful  and  earnest  of  those  hillside  watchmen  of  Pales- 
tine. Not  his  idly  to  content  himself  with  such  as  re- 
main quietly  within  the  fold.  Not  his  selfishly  to  enjoy 
the  society  of  congenial  spirits.  Not  his  to  seek  his 
own  pleasure  and  satisfaction  in  the  company  of  the 
saved.  If  they  are  truly  saved  they  have  no  need  of  him, 
they  will  not  sufifer  by  his  absence. 

But  there  are  those  who  do  need  him.  There  are 
those  who  have  strayed  from  the  right  way,  who  have 
lost  their  self-respect  and  the  respect  of  their  fellows, 
who  have  become  helpless  and  hopeless.  Toward  them 
his  soul  goes  out  in  strong  yearnings  of  love  and  desire. 
For  them  he  seeks.  With  them  he  pleads.  To  them  he 
goes,  forsaking  all  others.  To  win  them,  restore  them, 
save  them,  he  is  ready  to  toil,  to  suffer  and  to  die.  So 
long  as  there  are  wanderers  to  be  reclaimed,  fallen  ones 
to  be  uplifted,  discouraged  ones  to  be  strengthened, 
needy  ones  to  be  helped,  they  receive  his  first  care ;  and 
his  joy  is  in  their  rescue.  No  effort  is  too  great,  no 
sacrifice  is  too  appalling,  if  he  can  at  length  bring  them 
all  back  in  safety  and  peace  to  the  heavenly  fold.  To 
accomplish  this  the  Good  Shepherd  gives  his  life  for  the 
sheep. 

Here  is  the  truth   in  a  nutshell.     Wondrous   truth! 
I  The  most  innumerable  host  of  saved  souls  cannot  satisfy 
?the  yearnings  of  divine  love  so  long  as  a  single  lost  one 
I  wanders  from  the  paths  of  peace  and  righteousness.    All 
the  infinite  energies  of  heaven  are  concentrated,  not  upon 
the  rewards  and  felicities  of  the  good,  but  upon  the  re- 
covery of  the  bad,  upon  the  repentance  and  restoration 
of  sinners.     Men  may  speculate  as  coolly  as  they  please 
about  the  number  of  the  lost  and  the  probability  of  tli^ir 

274 


THE       GOOD       SHEPHERD 

being  permanently  lost,  but  the  Christy  if  he  misses  a 
single  lamb  from  the  flock,  harks  away  to  the  wilderness 
"until  he  find  it."  Men,  religious  men,  too  often  give 
themselves  up  selfishly  to  the  companionship  of  those 
who  do  not  need  their  help,  those  who  are  as  clean  and 
cultured,  as  pious  and  proper  as  themselves.  The  Christ 
denies  himself  such  fellowship  that  he  may  rescue 
others  who  are  lost  and  perishing. 

A  strange  thing  is  it,  O  scribes  and  Pharisees,  that 
the  Christ  should  receive  sinners,  that  he  should  go  out 
of  his  way  to  seek  the  company  of  the  low  and  the  vi- 
cious? Why,  that  is  the  very  purpose  for  which  he 
came !  That  is  the  essence  of  his  mission.  The  mean- 
ing of  his  Messiahship,  the  value  of  his  Christhood,  is 
bound  up  in  that.  You  righteous  ones  do  not  need  him. 
You  saved  ones  can  spare  him.  But  the  sinners — they 
are  the  ones  whom  Christ  came  all  the  way  from  heav- 
en to  earth  to  seek.  How  it  would  belittle  his  charac- 
ter, how  it  would  stultify  his  mission,  to  turn  aside  from 
his  quest  and  give  himself  up  to  the  society  of  the 
respectable,  the  pure,  the  saved! 

What  unspeakable  satisfaction  the  Almighty  must  take 
in  contemplating  the  host  of  godly  souls  who  delight  in 
his  worship,  who  gather  from  Sabbath  to  Sabbath  in  his 
house,  who  move  in  the  select  circle  of  the  saints !  What 
joy  must  thrill  angelic  hearts  at  the  sight  of  number- 
less pure  and  respectable  lives  that  have  never  given 
themselves  over  to  gross  sin  and  uncleanness !  So 
many  Christians  seem  to  think.  We  scribes  and  Phari- 
sees contribute  bountifully  to  the  gladness  of  heaven 
in  our  own  estimation.  But  what  says  Jesus?  "I  say 
unto  you,  There  shall  be  joy  in  heaven  over  one  sinner 
that  repenteth,  more  than  over  ninety  and  nine  righteous 
persons,  zvho  need  no  repentance."  Think  of  it!  That 
one  victim  of  appetite  made  strong  and  victorious,  that 
one  incarnation  of  greed  made  kind  and  benevolent,  that 
one  proud,  stubborn  soul  made  humble,  that  one  foul  and 

275 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

unlovely  creature  made  clean,  brings  more  joy  to  the 
heart  of  the  infinite  God  and  his  heavenly  angels  than 
all  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  all  the  self-complacent 
church-members,  all  the  refined  and  highly  respectable 
religionists  in  the  universe. 

God  made  man  for  perfection — every  man.  He  wants 
to  see  his  work  perfect.  So  long  as  souls  live  in  sin 
they  are  making  God's  work  a  failure.  His  success,  his 
infinite  glory,  are  bound  up  in  the  perfection  of  his  crea- 
tures. His  greatest  joy  is  found  in  the  return  of  a  soul 
from  sin  to  righteousness,  from  misery  to  blessedness; 
for  every  such  saved  one  brings  his  work  nearer  to  com- 
pletion. 

Am  I  carrying  the  thought  too  far?  I  take  refuge  in 
the  saying  of  an  aged  preacher  to  his  younger  neighbor, 
"Never  be  afraid  of  making  God  appear  too  good !"  That 
preacher  does  not  live,  no,  nor  ever  has  lived,  who  could 
paint  the  love  of  God  in  more  glowing  colors  than  those 
which  Jesus  used  in  the  parable  of  The  Lost  Sheep.  By 
comparison  with  their  noblest  efforts  this  is  as  the  sun 
beside  some  smoking  and  murky  candle.  It  is  the  pic- 
ture of  sublimest  truth  which  no  honest  disciple  can  for 
a  moment  hesitate  to  acknowledge  as  divine. 

Why,  oh,  why,  are  we  so  unwilling  to  grasp  this  truth 
with  all  that  is  involved  in  it?  The  mission  of  the  Christ 
was  to  sinners.  The  desire  of  God  is  toward  sinners. 
The  great  purpose  of  the  gospel  is  embodied  in  sinners. 
To  redeem,  to  rescue,  to  save,  that  is  the  sole  aim  of 
Christianity.  Our  Lord  never  had  it  in  mind  to  form  a 
select  society  of  the  good.  He  never  meant  to  gather 
together  the  pure  and  the  righteous  into  a  congenial  clulx 
to  be  called  the  Church  and  to  put  them  upon  a  plane  by 
themselves  far  above  the  poor  and  the  lost  and  the 
wretched.  Not  separation  but  salvation  is  the  aim  of  the 
gospel.  This  is  its  one  aim,  its  only  aim.  The  Church  was 
not  founded  to  mark  a  distinction  between  men,  to  sep- 
arate the  good  from  the  bad.    It  was  founded  to  help  in 

276 


THE       GQQDSHEPHERD 

making  all  men  good.  The  separation  will  take  care  of 
itself.  When  the  work  of  the  Church  has  been  com- 
pletely done  there  will  be  no  distinction. 

On  the  walls  of  the  divine  gallery  hangs  this  wonderful 
picture  of  The  Shepherd  and  the  Lost  Sheep.  We  de- 
light to  study  it  and  to  drink  in  its  marvelous  beauty. 
And  when  one  asks,  "Who  is  the  Shepherd  there  rep- 
resented?" we  are  wont  to  reply,  "Jesus  himself  is  the 
Good  Shepherd  of  the  parable."  "The  picture,"  we  say, 
"is  a  portrait  of  our  Lord  drawn  by  himself."  True,  un- 
questionably true.  But  does  that  reply  answer  the  ques- 
tion completely  and  finally?  Does  it  exhaust  the  mean- 
ing and  lesson  of  the  parable?  Is  the  sketch  simply  an 
argument  in  self- vindication?    I  think  not. 

The  mission  of  the  Christ  is  the  mission  of  the  Church ; 
it  is  the  mission  of  every  disciple  of  the  Christ.  The 
meaning  of  his  life  is  in  no  wise  different  from  the 
meaning  of  every  true  life.  The  duty  that  rested  upon 
his  shoulders  rests  upon  ours  to-day  in  equal  measure. 
What  he  did  you  and  I  ought  to  be  doing.  What  he 
did  you  and  I  are  doing  if  we  have  fully  understood  the 
meaning  of  discipleship.  The  parable  is  not  a  picture; 
it  is  a  mirror.  In  it  see  the  perfect  reflection  of  your 
own  true  self. 

As  you  and  I  walk  along  the  street,  we  meet  many  a 
fallen  soul;  from  the  face  the  traces  of  the  divine  im- 
age are  nearly  gone;  all  sense  of  that  which  is  good 
and  noble  is  fast  slipping  away;  and  we  hurry  on  to 
escape  the  contaminating  influence,  to  seek  a  more  con- 
genial fellowship,  or  to  join  the  company  of  the  saints 
in  God's  house ;  and  how  glad  we  are  when  we  enter  the 
hallowed  atmosphere !  But  in  the  very  moment  when 
we  are  congratulating  ourselves  that  we  are  not  as  other 
men,  nor  even  as  the  one  besotted  wretch  whom  we  have 
just  met,  there  comes  to  our  ears  the  echo  of  that  old  re- 
frain, "There  is  joy  in  heaven  over  one  sinner  that  re- 

277 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

penteth,  more  than  over  ninety  and  nine  righteous  per- 
sons, who  need  no  repentance." 

That  unlovely  one,  that  rude,  profane,  repulsive  soul, 
is  the  very  one  that  needs  us.  Toward  that  one  the  whole 
love  and  desire  of  heaven  go  out.  For  him  God  lives 
and  waits.  For  him  Jesus  died.  For  him  the  Master 
would  have  us  pray  and  labor  and  sacrifice  ourselves  that 
by  all  means  we  might  bring  him  back  to  purity  and  man- 
hood. What  do  we  here,  contentedly  watching  and  count- 
ing the  lambs  that  are  safely  within  the  fold?  Out  in 
the  darkness  and  peril,  far  away  in  the  wilderness  and 
storm  are  lost  ones  who  need  the  Shepherd's  help  and 
care.  And  we,  many  times,  are  only  too  glad  to  let 
them  remain  there  if  we  can  but  be  free  from  their 
presence  and  from  all  unpleasant  contact  with  them.  Such 
a  one  dies,  and  we  heave  a  sigh  of  relief,  thinking  the 
world  is  the  better  for  his  departure.  Or  such  a  one 
moves  from  our  own  community  or  neighborhood  to  an- 
other place  far  removed  from  us,  and  we  congratulate 
ourselves  on  lessened  responsibility  and  annoyance.  Yet 
the  salvation  of  such  a  soul  is  more  to  God  and  the  an- 
gels than  all  the  beauty  of  ninety  and  nine  respectable 
lives  like  yours  and  mine.  We  rejoice  in  the  fellowship 
of  the  safe  and  the  good,  and  murmur  "Good  riddance  I" 
to  the  bad  and  the  lost.  Does  the  Good  Shepherd  so? 
Ah,  remember,  the  good  shepherd  is  the  only  Christian. 
You  and  I  are  Christians,  not  according  to  the  measure 
of  our  spotless  purity,  which  may  be  wholly  selfish,  but 
according  to  the  degree  in  which  we  share  the  work  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  manifest  his  spirit. 

As  an  appeal  of  divine  love  to  the  heart  of  the  lost 
sinner  the  power  of  this  parable  has  long  been  recognized. 
In  all  the  wide  range  of  literature  it  has  no  parallel  from 
this  point  of  view ;  but  its  first  and  most  direct  message 
is  to  Christian  disciples,  and  this  is  too  often  overlooked. 
We  cannot  emphasize  too  strongly  the  eager  desire  of 
the  Christ  for  the  salvation  of  the  lost;  but,  doing  that, 

278 


THE       GOOD       SHEPHERD 

we  should  never  forget  that  the  desire  of  the  Christ  is 

the  measure  and  token  of  Christian  duty,  of  your  duty 
and  mine.  We  have  not  fully  learned  the  lesson  of  this 
parable  of  The  Lost  Sheep  till  there  ring  in  our  ears 
unceasingly  those  words  of  our  Lord  in  which  he  himself 
gathers  up  the  whole  thought  of  the  picture  and  flings 
it  forth  to  his  hearers,  "There  is  joy  in  heaven  over  one 
sinner  that  repenteth,  more  than  over  ninety  and  nine 
righteous  persons,  who  need  no  repentance." 


279 


The  Lost  Coin 


CHAPTER  XXII 

The  Lost  Coin 

THE  PIECE  OF    MONEY 

Luke  15:8-10 

Text. — ^'Theri  it  joy  in  the  presence  of  the  angels  of  God  over  one  sinner 
that  repenteth.  "—Luke  IS  :10 

THE  unity  of  the  race  is  no  fiction  of  philos- 
ophy. It  is  an  unavoidable  verity.  The 
brotherhood  of  man  is  a  truth  as  vital  as  the 
fatherhood  of  God.  To  ignore  the  one  is  to 
stultify  the  other.  And  this  brotherhood, 
this  unity,  manifests  itself  in  ways  that  are  not  always 
agreeable.  There  is  a  certain  identity  of  nature  and 
even  of  character  that  many  of  us  would  gladly 
escape,  or  deny.  Outwardly  we  confess  with  Paul, 
"There  is  no  difference:  for  all  have  sinned."  Then 
Galileo-like  we  mutter  under  our  breath,  "But  there  is 
a  difference,  a  very  great  difference  between  different 
sinners."  Too  often  we  wholly  pervert  the  words  of 
the  apostle,  and  make  them  our  excuse  for  seeking  out 
the  most  respectable  and  attractive  "sinners,"  while  we 
utterly  neglect  the  foul  and  repulsive,  so  manifesting  a 
spirit  of  arrant  hypocrisy  that  is  none  the  less  harmful 
because  it  is  in  the  majority  of  cases  quite  unconscious. 
This  spirit  confronts  the  Master  in  the  midst  of  his 
work  and  he  exposes  and  answers  it  in  a  parable. 

The  parable  of  The  Lost  Sheep  answered  the  cavil 
of  the  critics.  It  made  their  murmurs  ridiculous  by 
lowing  that  this  seeking  of  the  lost  was  the  very  pur- 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

pose  for  which  the  Christ  should  come.  It  vindicated 
the  Saviour's  mission  and  put  the  fauhfinders  to  shame. 

But  Jesus  does  not  stop  there.  He  cares  nothing 
for  mere  self-vindication.  He  never  utters  a  word 
or  performs  an  act  of  self-defense  that  does  not 
spring  from  some  motive  looking  beyond  self  or  pre- 
paring the  way  for  a  positive  blessing  to  others.  He 
knows  that  the  criticism  of  the  Pharisees  and  scribes 
is  the  outgrowth,  not  of  one  misconception,  but  of  a  chain 
of  false  notions  closely  linked  together.  These  respect- 
able and  pious  critics  had  failed  to  understand  the  mis- 
sion of  the  Saviour  and  the  meaning  of  religion.  But 
that  was  not  their  only  failure.  They  had  also  mis- 
understood the  nature  of  the  sinners  whom  they  con- 
demned. They  had  missed  their  true  relation  to  them- 
selves and  to  God. 

The  Pharisee  always  despises  the  sinner  and  puts  him 
in  a  wholly  different  order  of  creation  from  himself,  the 
saint.  The  old-time  distinction  of  the  book  of  Genesis 
between  the  "sons  of  God"  and  the  children  of  men 
obtains  to  this  day.  We  see  in  one  class  of  men  a  close 
relation  to  the  heavenly  Father,  and  in  the  other  little 
more  than  a  higher  order  of  the  animal  creation.  God, 
on  the  other  hand,  sees  in  every  man  a  spark  of  divinity. 
In  his  sight  the  most  degraded  and  unlovely  is  a  child 
of  God. 

To  the  parable  of  The  Lost  Sheep,  therefore,  Jesus 
adds  this  second  story,  the  parable  of  The  Lost  Coin. 
In  it  he  turns  wholly  away  from  the  vindication  of  him- 
self and  his  mission  and  makes  a  strong  plea  for  the 
I  lost  ones,  the  sinners.  He  does  not  excuse  them  nor 
'make  light  of  their  wanderings,  but  he  shows  that,  how- 
/ever  lost  and  sinful,  they  are  still  children  of  God,  as 
divine  and  as  precious  in  the  sight  of  the  Creator  as 
ever  their  critics  were. 

Note  the  displacement  of  the  picturesque  shepherd  by 
the  impersonal   "woman,"  the  exchange  of  the  living 

284 


THE       PIECE      OF      MONEY 

sheep  for  the  lifeless  piece  of  silver,  the  reduction  of  the 
number  from  one  hundred  to  ten,  that  every  distracting 
element  may  be  removed  and  the  attention  concentrated 
upon  a  single  thought.  We  have  here  no  comparison 
or  contrast  between  the  lost  and  the  saved.  It  is  not 
one  over  against  ninety  and  nine,  or  even  one  in  contrast 
with  nine.  It  is  simply  an  emphatic  declaration  of  the 
intrinsic  worth  of  the  lost  soul  and  the  supreme  joy  of 
the  angels  in  its  salvation.  The  story  gathers  up  the  em- 
phasis of  the  three  stories  and  centers  it  upon  one  point. 
Is  the  sinner  lost?  Yes;  but  he  is  a  lost  sheep.  Is  he 
lost?  Yes;  but  a  lost  coin.  Is  he  lost?  Yes;  but  a 
lost  son.  Before,  the  focus  of  the  parable  was  upon  the 
seeker;  now  it  is  upon  the  sought. 

A  change  of  character  is  not  a  change  of  nature.  Sin 
may  rf^face  the  image  of  God;  it  can  never  ^/face  it. 
The  divine  spark  exists  in  every  soul.  Dormant  it  may 
be.  Concealed  deeply  beneath  an  accumulation  of 
earthiness  and  sensuality  it  often  is.  Nevertheless  it  is 
not  extinguished  nor  can  be.  And  that  spark  of  divine 
life  is  infinitely  precious.  To  bring  it  to  light  and  to 
rekindle  it  into  a  growing  flame  will  repay  all  the  labor 
and  sacrifice  of  men  or  of  angels.  Yes,  it  is  worth  the 
utmost  effort  of  God  himself.  On  this  thought  every 
detail  of  our  parable  centers. 

How  vividly  the  divine  Artist  represents  the  eagerness 
of  the  Almighty  for  the  recovery  of  the  sinner  by  dwell- 
ing on  the  several  steps  of  the  woman's  search!  "Doth 
she  not  (a)  light  a  lamp,  and  (b)  sweep  the  house,  and 
(c)  seek  diligently  until  (d)  she  find  it?  These 
successive  steps  find  their  perfect  parallel  in  the  workings 
of  divine  Providence  for  the  redemption  of  men. 

"Doth  she  not  light  a  lamp?"  All  through  the  ages 
has  not  God's  eternal  truth  flashed  down  amid  human  er- 
ror and  pagan  darkness  ?  Never  has  the  world  been  left 
without  at  least  some  faint  glimmer  of  heavenly  light. 
The  "candle  of  the  Lord"  has  been  shining  from  the 

285 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

beginning  with  an  inextinguishable  flame.  The  "truth  as 
it  is  in  Jesus,"  the  fact  that  "God  so  loved  the  world, 
that  he  gave  his  only  begotten  Son,  that  whosoever  be- 
lieveth  in  him  should  not  perish,  but  have  everlasting 
life,"  the  faithful  saying  that  "Christ  Jesus  came  into 
the  world  to  save  sinners," — this  is  the  light  which  God 
employs. 

How  brightly  that  light  shines  to-day !  How  infinitely 
more  glorious  is  this  lamp  of  divine  truth  than  the  blaz- 
ing sun  at  noonday!  Surely  no  soul  in  this  land  ever 
perishes  for  want  of  light.  If  any  are  lost,  it  must  be 
in  spite  of  the  clearest  knowledge  of  truth.  If  our  lives 
are  dark,  it  is  not  because  there  is  no  light,  but  because 
we  shut  out  the  light  which  is  shining  with  resplendent 
brightness  all  about  us,  because  we  will  not  admit  it  in- 
to our  lives. 

"Doth  she  not.  .  .  sweep  the  house  f"  Revelation  is  not 
the  only  force  or  means  employed  for  our  salvation. 
After  the  giving  of  the  light  comes  the  effort  to  make 
the  light  effectual.  The  pieces  of  silver  had  fallen  upon 
the  rush-covered  floor,  and  until  the  rushes  or  other  ob- 
jects were  removed  the  brightest  light  could  not  reveal 
it  to  the  seeker's  eye. 

So  the  truth  of  God  shines  clear  and  bright ;  but  many 
things  intervene  to  shut  the  light  from  the  soul.  There 
are  besetting  sins,  personal  ambitions,  masterful  desires, 
overcrowding  cares,  or  any  one  of  a  thousand  other 
earthly  matters.  Men  permit  themselves  to  become  sur- 
rounded by  evil  associates  and  associations,  to  become 
the  slaves  of  ungodly  habit,  to  be  wholly  occupied  with 
things  low  and  unworthy,  so  that  they  are  insensible  to 
the  persuasions  of  divine  truth. 

Then  God  comes  in  some  special  providence,  causing 
a  disturbance  in  business,  bringing  a  personal  bereave- 
ment or  failure,  turning  the  life  into  new  channels,  set- 
ting at  naught  the  plans  and  purposes  of  the  wayward 
child.     By  one  method  or  another  these  earthly  environ- 

286 


THE       PIECE      OF      MONEY 

ments  are  upturned  and  scattered  till  the  light  of  God 
shines  clear  and  bright  upon  the  soul.  Then  old  ques- 
tions take  on  a  new  meaning.  Old  truth  comes  home 
with  new  power.  The  divine  word  awakens  a  response 
in  the  heart.  The  light  is  flashed  back  from  the  re- 
pentant, submissive  soul,  and  in  that  moment  the  Creator 
finds  and  recovers  the  lost  one. 

Again.  "Doth  she  not  .  .  .  seek  diligently?"  Ah,  yes, 
the  recovery  of  lost  souls  has  not  been  accomplished  with- 
out diligent  seeking.  Think  of  all  the  labor  and  sacri- 
fice that  has  been  undertaken  for  the  redemption  of  hu- 
manity. Trace  the  blood-marked  footsteps  of  the  Sa- 
viour by  the  shores  of  Galilee,  through  the  streets  of 
Jerusalem,  on  the  slopes  of  Olivet.  Go  with  him  to  the 
Garden  of  Gethsemane  and  up  Mount  Calvary.  Think 
of  the  long  succession  of  prophets,  apostles,  martyrs. 
Add  to  this  all  the  vast  enginery  of  the  Christian  Church, 
all  the  varied  lines  of  Christian  service,  everything  that 
has  been  done  in  every  land  and  in  every  age  to  bring 
the  gospel  to  men  and  to  bring  men  to  the  gospel,  all 
missionary  and  philanthropic  enterprise,  all  refining 
and  civilizing  influences,  all  truly  unselfish  eflfort  to  uplift 
mankind. 

In  all  that  marvelous  story  of  the  Jesuit  missions 
among  the  savages  of  North  America,  in  the  labors  of  a 
Moffat  and  a  Livingstone  in  the  darkness  of  Africa,  in 
the  toil  and  sufferings  of  Newell  and  the  Judsons  in  Bur- 
mah,  in  the  consecrated  labors  of  General  Booth  and 
his  aids  in  London  and  other  cities  of  Great  Britain  and 
America,  in  the  tireless  efforts  of  Miss  Frances  Willard 
and  her  army  of  Christian  women  devoted  to  the  work 
of  rescuing  the  victims  of  intemperance — in  these  and 
ten  thousand  similar  activities  see  the  incarnation  of  the 
divine  Saviour  eagerly  seeking  for  lost  souls.  Is  the 
search  fruitless?  Will  it  ever  be  fruitless?  No,  no,  the 
seeking  of  God  can  never  be  fruitless. 

To  the  three  steps  already  taken  is  always  added  the 

287 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

fourth,  "Until  she  find  it."  The  quest  of  the  divine 
Spirit  will  not  cease  till  the  lost  is  found,  the  sinner  re- 
stored. And  the  eagerness  of  the  seeking  is  only  equalled 
by  the  joy  of  the  finding.  "When  she  hath  found  it,  she 
calleth  together  her  friends  and  neighbors,  saying, 
Rejoice  with  me,  for  I  have  found  the  piece  which  I  had 
lost.  Even  so,  I  say  unto  you,  there  is  joy  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  angels  of  God  over  one  sinner  that  repent- 
eth."  Observe  how  the  comparative  form  of  the  pre- 
ceding parable  here  gives  place  to  a  positive  and  direct 
statement.  There  the  one  was  set  against  the  ninety 
and  nine.  Here  we  see  only  the  one  piece  recovered 
as  the  cause  of  joy.  The  great  fact  of  the  divine  joy 
in  the  salvation  of  a  sinner  is  made  more  vivid  by  this 
simplicity  of  expression.  The  thought  is  withdrawn 
from  all  external  matters  and  centered  upon  one  truth. 
Whenever  a  lost  soul  is  saved,  heaven  rejoices.  The 
whole  force  of  the  celestial  world  is  concentered  upon 
the  seeking ;  all  its  joy  bursts  forth  at  the  finding. 

When  some  poor,  besotted  wretch  is  picked  up  from 
the  gutter  and  induced  to  try  never  so  feebly  for  a  sober 
life ;  when  some  fallen  woman  is  rescued  from  the  paths 
of  sin,  and,  softened  and  inspired  by  the  sweet  influ- 
ences of  sisterly  love,  starts  out  in  a  new  life  of  purity 
and  hope;  when  some  hardened  criminal,  touched  by 
the  power  of  Christian  kindness,  makes  even  the  most  im- 
perfect effort  toward  reform ;  there  may  be  little  joy  in 
the  Church,  for  we  do  not  welcome  such  very  cordially 
into  our  fellowship;  we  do  not  feel  that  they  add  much 
to  our  strength  or  reputation  or  influence;  we  prefer  to 
hold  them  at  arm's  length  for  a  long  time;  but  there  is 
joy  in  every  true  and  Christly  soul,  there  is  a  song 
in  every  Godlike  heart,  and  the  glad  song  is  taken  up 
and  rolled  back  again  by  the  countless  host  of  ransomed 
ones,^  and  the  very  angels  around  the  throne  catch  the 
refrain  and  join  to  swell  the  anthem  of  praise  and  glad- 
ness.   We  are  glad  when  some  clean  and  cultured  and 

288 


THE       PIECE       OF       MONEY 

influential  citizen  takes  his  first  communion;  but  when 
"Ash  Barrel  Jimmy"  or  one  of  his  ilk  is  brought  half 
drunk  into  a  Salvation  Army  meeting  and  is  sobered  and 
cleaned  and  saved,  the  Hallelujah  Chorus  is  sung  by  the 
archangels. 

Now  what  is  the  meaning  of  all  this  ?  Why  the  light- 
ing of  the  lamp  ?  Why  the  sweeping  of  the  house  ? 
Why  the  diligent  seeking?  Why  the  persistence  to  the 
end?  Why  the  joy  at  finding?  How  shall  we  explain 
these  things?  They  need  no  explanation  in  the  story. 
Every  detail  is  perfectly  natural,  perfectly  clear  to  the 
mind  of  the  most  childish  reader.  Each  is  just  what  we 
should  expect.  The  woman  had  lost  a  piece  of  silver,  one 
of  the  precious  metals,  a  considerable  part  of  her  little 
store  of  wealth.  She  could  ill  afford  to  spare  it  from 
her  slender  hoard.  To  incur  such  a  loss  meant  a  great 
deal  to  her.  The  possibility  of  loss  arouses  deep  anx- 
iety; the  recovery  causes  corresponding  joy. 

When  we  come  to  the  spiritual  interpretation  the  mat- 
ter is  not  so  simple.  It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  this 
phase  of  the  divine  character.  To  think  that  God  really 
suffers  loss  when  a  soul  strays  from  the  path  of  rec- 
titude, that  he  is  really  anxious  and  eager  for  its  re- 
covery— how  many  of  us  ever  rise  to  such  a  conception? 
We  coolly  theorize  about  the  probable  number  of  the 
saved.  We  calmly  discuss  whether  it  be  worth  while  to 
put  forth  this  or  that  effort  for  the  salvation  of  men, 
and  whether  certain  classes  of  our  fellow  creatures  are 
open  to  spiritual  influences.  Yes,  we  even  consign  the 
great  majority  of  the  race  to  endless  perdition  with  only 
a  superficial  sigh  of  regret.  And  all  the  while  God  is 
working,  agonizing,  sacrificing  for  their  salvation. 

We  picture  the  infinitely  loving  God  as  a  cold  and  in- 
different Judge,  thinking  much  of  the  dignity  of  his 
law,  concerned  above  all  else  for  the  majesty  of  his  own 
will.  We  represent  him  as  with  perfect  self-satisfac- 
tion punishing  and  driving  into  permanent  exile  those 

289 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

who  have  disobeyed  him  and  wandered  from  his  fold. 

Not  such  is  the  portrait  of  the  Father  that  Jesus  has 
sketched  for  us.  He  would  have  us  believe,  he  would 
have  us  understand,  that  every  soul  is  precious  in  the 
sight  of  God.  Not  one  can  go  astray  without  causing 
him  sorrow  and  loss.  As  some  one  has  phrased  it,  "The 
lostness  of  the  sinner  is  God's  loss,  and  God  suffers 
more  than  the  sinner  by  the  separation." 

But  we  have  not  told  the  whole  story  when  we  say 
that  it  is  a  bit  of  precious  metal  that  is  lost.  It  is  more. 
It  is  a  coin — a  coin  of  the  realm.  It  is  not  merely  a 
piece  of  silver  of  fluctuating  value,  dependent  for  its 
worth  upon  the  state  of  the  market.  It  is  silver  minted 
and  molded  into  money.  Its  value  is  fixed  by  the  stamp 
upon  it.  It  bears  the  image  and  superscription  of  the 
emperor.  It  is  designed  not  simply  as  a  medium  of 
exchange,  but  equally  for  a  testimony  to  the  royalty  and 
right  of  him  whose  likeness  is  impressed  upon  it. 

Is  the  value  of  a  coin  lessened  by  being  lost?  Is  the 
dollar  in  the  gutter  worth  less  than  the  dollar  in  the 
pocket?  Of  course  not!  True,  it  may  become  rusty 
and  dusty;  it  may  be  tarnished  and  to  some  extent  de- 
faced or  encrusted  with  filth;  but  it  is  a  coin  still,  as 
valuable  and  as  standard  as  when  it  lay  in  the  purse  or 
adorned  the  person  of  its  owner.  It  is  not  the  bright- 
ness and  beauty  of  a  coin  that  determines  its  value,  nor 
yet  is  it  the  place  where  it  lies,  but  the  metal  of  which 
it  is  made  and  the  figures  stamped  upon  it. 

Here  is  the  key  to  the  parable  in  a  single  word.  Here 
is  the  focus  of  every  detail  in  the  story.  The  eagerness 
in  seeking,  the  joy  in  finding,  both  point  to  the  unspeak- 
able value  of  the  human  soul,  to  its  essential  divinity. 
"A  lost  soul,"  you  say.  Yes;  but  a  soul  none  the  less, 
a  soul  made  in  the  image  of  God,  just  as  divine  and  just 
as  precious  as  the  soul  that  is  not  lost.  "Scribes  and 
Pharisees,"  "publicans  and    sinners,"    what    are    they? 

290 


THE       PIECE       OF       MONEY 

Two  different  classes  of  beings  wholly  distinct  and  un- 
related? Two  independent  and  divergent  products  oi 
moral  evolution?  No,  they  are  coins  from  the  same 
mint,  of  equal  worth,  identical  in  value.  The  one  may 
be  polished  and  bright,  the  other  soiled  with  the  dust 
of  the  floor,  but  they  are  stamped  with  the  same  like- 
ness, they  represent  the  same  measure  of  wealth  in  the 
kingdom  of  heaven. 

Can  it  be  possible  ? — that  repulsive,  sin-stained,  unlove- 
ly creature,  of  the  same  order  of  being  with  ourselves 
who  are  so  clean  and  so  attractive?  That  profane  and 
godless  wretch,  can  he  have  anything  in  common  with 
us  who  delight  in  the  worship  of  God's  house  and  who 
are  very  careful  never  to  transgress  God's  law?  That 
selfish,  sordid  person,  can  he  be  even  remotely  akin  to 
us  who  are  so  benevolent  and  kind?  So  we,  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees  of  to-day,  often  ask.  And  the  Christ  of 
to-day.  as  of  old,  replies,  "Who  made  thee  to  differ  from 
another  ?" 

''Think  gently  of  the  erring  one! 
And  let  us  not  forget, 
However  darkly  stained  by  sin, 
He  is  our  brother  yet. 

Heir  of  the  same  inheritance. 
Child  of  the  self-same  God ; 
He  hath  but  stumbled  in  the  path 
We  have  in  weakness  trod." 

As  the  parable  of  The  Lost  Sheep  emphasizes  the 
truth  that  the  great  work  of  Christ  in  every  age  is  to  save 
the  lost,  this  parable  of  The  Lost  Coin  teaches  us  that 
the  lost  and  the  saved  are  one  in  nature  and  value.  The 
worth  of  a  man  is  not  determined  by  outward  condition 
or  accident.  We  may  admire  the  mere  adornments  of 
the  man.    We  may  applaud  physical  strength,  courage, 

291 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

or  achievement.     We  may  set  great  store  by  intellectual 

acquisition.  We  may  pride  ourselves  overmuch  on  re- 
finement, purity,  uprightness.  We  may  flatter  ourselves 
because  of  our  piety  and  religiousness.  All  these  things 
deserve  attention.  They  are  essential  elements  in  our 
salvation.  They  are  of  no  little  importance  to  the  com- 
fort and  welfare  of  the  race.  But  far  above  the  best 
of  them,  of  infinitely  greater  value  than  all,  is  the  divine 
fact  of  manhood.  It  is  an  immeasurably  greater  thing 
to  be  a  man  than  to  be  a  philosopher;  greater  to  be  a 
man  than  to  be  a  reformer ;  yes,  greater  to  be  a  man  even 
than  to  be  a  Christian.  To  be  made  of  the  precious 
metal,  to  be  stamped  with  the  image  of  the  King  of 
kings,  that  is  the  vital  thing.  And  he  who  bears  that 
image  is  never  to  be  despised  or  despaired  of  however 
he  may  be  soiled  and  battered  with  the  world's  rough 
handling. 

The  brotherhood  of  man  is  a  great  reality;  and  we 
should  never  let  the  greatness  of  it  overshadow  its  real- 
ity. It  is  easy  to  wax  eloquent  over  our  responsibility 
for  the  remote  nations  and  tribes  of  the  earth,  to  stir 
up  emotional  sympathy  for  some  oppressed  Armenians 
or  starving  Hindoos.  That  is  the  greatness  of  this 
brotherhood.  But  to  recognize  our  own  immediate  kin- 
ship with  the  erring  and  the  disagreeable  in  our  own 
community,  that  is  the  reality  of  it  which  is  not  so  easy 
or  so  acceptable. 

The  sword  of  the  Spirit  as  it  flashes  from  this  parable 
is  two-edged.  It  pierces  Pharisees  on  the  one  hand  and 
sinners  on  the  other.  Whoever  is  unwilling  to  be  reckon- 
ed in  the  one  category  must  take  his  place  in  the  other  ( 
or  he  will  miss  the  message  that  lies  in  this  story.  To 
Pharisees  it  speaks  a  message  of  brotherliness;  to  sin-' 
ners  a  message  of  self-respect.  To  both  it  proclaims 
the  divine  sonship  of  every  man — the  fatherhood  of  God 
and  the  brotherhood  of  his  children  as  mutually  essen- 
tial to  the  interpretation  of  the  gospel.    We  have  missed 

292 


THE       PIECE       OF       MONEY 

the  one  great  purpose  of  the  story  if  we  have  not 
been  drawn  away  from  all  distinctions  of  character  and 
attainment,  if  we  have  not  discovered  that  these  are, 
after  all,  but  accidents,  and  learned  that  the  most  pre- 
cious thing  in  the  universe,  the  true  coin  of  the  kingdom^ 
of  heaven  is  the  human  soul. 


293 


The  Lost  Son 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

The  Lost  Son 


THE   PRODIGAL  AND   THE  DRUDGE 

Luke  15:11-32 

Teict.—"  TAis  my  jon  .  .   .  ivaj  lost,  and  it  found.'" — Luke  IS:  24 


N^'GT  what  we  do  is  the  measure  of  life's  worth. 
Not  what  we  fail  to  do  is  the  measure  of 
its  worthlessness.     More    important    than 
the  doing  or  the  not  doing  is  the_£plrit  that 
—  controls  our  life,  the  motive  that  inspires 

our  action  or  causes  us  to  refrain  from  acting.  God- 
liness does  not  consist  solely  or  chiefly  in  upright 
conduct,  in  faultless  character,  in  pious  manners  and 
religious  observances.  It  consists  in  love — love  to  God 
that  manifests  itself  in  love  to  all  his  creatures.  It 
consists  in  love  by  whatsoever  means  and  in  whatsoever 
forms  revealed.  Love  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  law;  and 
love  is  also  the  very  essence  of  the  gospel. 

"If  I  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men  and  of  angels, 
but  have  not  love,  I  am  become  sounding  brass,  or  a 
clanging  cymbal.  And  if  I  have  the  gift  of  prophecy, 
and  know  all  mysteries  and  all  knowledge ;  and  if  I  have 
all  faith,  so  as  to  remove  mountains,  but  have  not  love, 
I  am  nothing.  And  if  I  bestow  all  my  goods  to  feed  the 
poor,  and  if  I  give  my  body  to  be  burned,  but  have  not 
love,  it  profiteth  me  nothing." 

This  is  the  direct  and  epigrammatic  way  in  which  St. 
Paul  puts  the  very  truth  that  Jesus  embodied  in  the  story 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

commonly  known  as  the  parable  of  The  Prodigal  Son. 
Jesus  would  teach  us,  and  Paul  would  emphasize  the 
truth,  that  holiness  and  sin  are  not  primarily  contrasted 
forms  of  outward  conduct.  They  are  contrasted  spirits, 
and  whatever  grows  from  these.  Holiness  is  love  and 
such  conduct  as  love  inspires.  The  essence  of  sin,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  not  disregard  of  respectabiUty  or 
neglect  of  the  conventional  forms  and  services  of  re- 
ligion, it  is  not  even  the  infraction  of  moral  law,  but 
lovelessness.  Loveless  respectability,  loveless  piety, 
loveless  morality  are  as  really  sinful  and  as  destructive  of 
character  as  is  the  conduct  which  we  brand  disgraceful. 

Pharisees  and  scribes  had  been  shocked  at  the  associ- 
ation of  Jesus  with  the  lower  and  less  refined  classes. 
They  had  murmured,  saying,  "This  man  receiveth  sin- 
ners, and  eateth  with  them!"  They  had  flattered  them- 
selves that  "sinners"  belong  to  a  peculiar  social  class, 
distinguished  by  certain  habits  and  occupations  and  fail- 
ings. The  Master  replies  to  their  criticism  with  three- 
fold completeness. 

First,  in  the  parable  of  The  Lost  Sheep,  he  vindicates 
himself  and  his  mission.  Then,  in  the  parable  of  The 
Lost  Coin,  he  asserts  the  equal  worth  of  all  souls  in  the 
sight  of  God.  Now,  in  the  parable  of  The  Lost  Son,  he 
convicts  the  critics  of  being  sinners  equally  with  those 
whom  they  were  so  ready  to  condemn.  He  shows  them 
that,  however  great  may  be  the  outward  difference  be- 
tween themselves  and  the  "sinners,"  so  called,  however 
moral  and  religious  they,  the  Pharisees,  may  be,  they 
are  wholly  wanting  in  the  spirit  of  love  which  alone  is 
acceptable  to  God.  If  they  are  pious,  it  is  formal  piety. 
If  they  are  respectable,  it  is  conventional  respectability. 
If  they  are  honest,  it  is  because  they  know  that  honesty 
is  the  best  policy.  It  they  are  pure,  it  is  because  purity 
wins  popular  respect.  If  they  are  scrupulous  in  the  ful- 
filment of  religious  duties,  regular  in  their  attendance  at 
temple  services,  liberal  in  paying  their  tithes,  careful  in 

2fl8 


THE    PRODIGAL  AND    THE    DRUDGE 

the  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  particular  about  unnum- 
bered trifles,  it  is  because  they  deem  all  these  things  nec- 
essary to  the  salvation  of  their  souls.  They  are  not 
actuated  in  any  of  these  things  by  a  true  and  hearty 
love  for  God  or  godliness. 

While  the  parable  has  become  from  the  beauty  and 
simplicity  of  the  story  a  matchless  appeal  to  sinners  in 
the  most  literal  interpretation  of  the  virord,  that  is  not 
its  only  purpose,  nor  even  its  chief  purpose.  The  princi- 
pal figure  in  the  picture  as  presented  by  Jesus  is  not  the 
prodigal  but  the  elder  brother.  Or,  to  speak  more  ac- 
curately, the  two  brothers  are  placed  side  by  side  in  con- 
trast with  the  father.  It  is  the  lovelessness  of  sinful 
men  over  against  the  yearning  love  of  God.  The  great 
sin  of  the  younger  son  is  not  desertion  of  his  father's 
house,  extravagant  and  perhaps  intemperate  or  immoral 
living,  unworthy  and  degrading  occupations,  but  scorn 
of  the  father's  love  which  was  revealed  in  these.  And 
the  elder  brother,  with  all  his  respectability  and  drudg- 
ing faithfulness  shows  himself  to  be  actuated  by  the  same 
spirit. 

See  how  the  whole  parable  is  framed  to  present  this 
truth  most  clearly. 

First,  we  have  a  sketch  of  the  younger  son.  We  hear 
his  rude  demand  for  a  division  of  the  property.  We  see 
him  leaving  his  home  and  taking  his  journey  to  a  far 
country.  What  is  there  wrong  in  all  this?  Nothing  in 
the  acts  themselves.  Abraham,  the  saint  of  antiquity. 
did  the  same,  and  we  praise  him  for  it.  Not  the  mere 
demand  and  departure,  but  the  manner  of  doing  these 
things  and  the  motive  inspiring  the  acts  are  what  con- 
demn the  young  man.  He  is  unloving  himself  and  he 
does  not  appreciate  his  father's  love.  He  wants  to  get 
as  far  away  as  possible  from  that  father.  He  thinks  he 
can  have  no  real  pleasure  till  he  is  out  of  his  father's 
sight  and  beyond  the  hearing  of  his  voice. 

Nor  does  he  think  of  returning  till  he  is  compelled  by 

399 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

hunger.  He  plunges  into  a  seL  sh,  loveless  life.  He 
spends  his  substance  in  riotous  living.  Doubtless  chums 
and  companions  were  numerous  enough  while  his  money 
lasted,  but  friends  he  had  none.  Without  love  himself, 
he  inspires  no  love  in  others.  So  when  his  money  is 
gone  the  companions  of  his  better  days  disappear  and  he 
is  left  to  shift  for  himself. 

At  length  a  crisis  is  reached.  Starvation  stares  hirr\ 
in  the  face.  He  has  had  his  fun.  He  has  seen  the  world. 
And  this  is  the  end  of  it.  As  he  sits  there  among  the 
swine,  not  daring  to  take  even  so  much  as  a  husk  or 
carob  pod  to  stay  the  cravings  of  his  hunger,  "he  comes 
to  himself."  Adversity  is  a  wonderful  eye-opener.  Ne- 
cessity is  the  mother  of  common  sense.  The  insanity 
plea  is  as  old  as  sin ;  but,  as  Dr.  Barker  said  at  the  Gui- 
teau  trial,  "Moral  insanity  is  wickedness." 

His  insanity  cured,  not  by  medicine  but  by  discipline, 
he  sees  the  real  foolishness  of  his  course.  But  mark, 
there  is  no  repentance  for  his  sin,  no  upspringing  of  love 
for  his  injured  father,  no  true  regret  for  his  own  in- 
gratitude. Those  who  make  this  an  example  of  true 
repentance  read  something  into  the  story  that  Jesus  never 
put  there,  It  is  simply  the  desire  of  a  hungry  man  for 
something  to  eat.  "How  many  hired  servants  of  my 
father's  have  bread  enough  and  to  spare,  and  I  perish 
here  with  hunger!"  It  is  a  question  between  return  and 
starvation,  and  he  is  not  quite  ready  to  starve.  "Humble- 
pie"  is  better  than  nothing  at  all  to  eat.  Men  like  the 
prodigal  are  not  the  stuff  that  heroes  and  martyrs  are 
made  of.  So  he  says  to  himself,  "I  will  arise  and  go 
to  my  father,  and  will  say  unto  him,  .  .  .  Make  me  as  one 
of  thy  hired  servants"  (i.  e.,  Let  me  have  bread  enough 
and  to  spare). 

The  young  man  had  as  yet  no  appreciation  of  his  fath- 
er's love.  True,  he  thought  up  a  nice  little  speech  about 
his  unworthiness  and  sinning  against  heaven,  because  he 
imagined  that  would  be  necessary  in  order  to  win  his 

300 


THE  PRODIGAL  AND  THE  DRUDGE 

father's  favor;  but  he  was  preparing  to  add  another  in- 
sult to  paternal  affection  by  asking  for  a  servant's  place 
in  the  home  of  his  childhood. 

This  is  not  repentance,  but  reform.  It  is  the  return 
to  respectability  by  one  who  has  discovered  that  riot- 
ous wickedness  does  not  pay.  A  man  cannot  procras- 
tinate when  he  is  starving  and  a  vision  of  plenty  arises 
before  him.  Most  naturally  therefore,  "He  arose,  and 
came  to  his  father." 

Now  observe  the  contrast  between  the  selfish  indif- 
ference of  the  son  and  the  earnest,  longing  love  of  the 
father.  See  how  eagerly  the  father  waits  and  watches 
for  his  return.  "And  while  he  was  yet  afar  off,  his 
father  saw  him."  All  through  the  long  weeks  and  months 
of  the  youth's  absence  that  father's  heart  had  been  going 
out  to  him  in  love,  his  eyes  had  been  strained  to  catch 
the  first  sight  of  his  return.  At  last  he  comes  and  the 
father  seeing  him  at  a  distance  cannot  restrain  himself 
a  moment.  "He  ran,  and  fell  on  his  neck,  and  kissed 
him  again  and  again."  The  son  is  ragged !  Never 
mind.  He  is  filthy  and  unkempt!  What  of  that?  He 
is  the  son,  the  long-lost  son,  and  the  father's  love  and 
joy  are  unbounded. 

Here,  for  the  first  time,  the  father's  love  seems  to 
make  an  impression  upon  the  heart  of  the  son.  He  be- 
gins his  carefully  prepared  speech,  "Father,  I  have 
sinned  against  heaven,  and  in  thy  sight:  I  am  no  more 
worthy  to  be  called  thy  son."  And  there  he  stops.  He 
can  go  no  further.  He  cannot  insult  such  love,  he  can- 
not turn  his  back  on  such  a  welcome  by  asking  a  ser- 
vant's place.  Never  before  had  he  understood  the  na- 
ture of  that  father's  love.  Now  it  overwhelms  and  con- 
quers him.  He  is  miserable,  helpless,  destitute.  He  can- 
not requite  such  kindness.  The  only  return  that  he  can 
nake  is  to  receive  it  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  bestowed ; 
and  this  he  does. 

But  the  end  of  love  is  not  yet.    The  v/anderer  is  wel- 

301 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

corned;  he  mii?t  be  restored.  ''Bring  forth  quickly  the 
best  robe,  and  put  it  on  him;  and  put  a  ring  on  his  hand, 
and  shoes  on  his  feet;  and  bring  forth  the  fatted  calf, 
and  kill  it,  and  let  us  eat,  and  make  merry."  See  the 
climax  of  love.  The  prodigal  is  received  just  as  though 
he  had  been  a  loving  son  absent  on  duty  and  winning 
great  honors  for  the  family. 

Nor  is  the  picture  overdrawn  by  so  much  as  a  single 
line.  That  is  precisely  the  manner  in  which  God  re- 
ceives the  sinner.  First,  a  welcome;  sin  is  forgiven; 
transgression  is  freely  pardoned.  Then  the  sinner  is 
restored,  cleansed,  sanctified.  All  the  joy  and  freedom 
and  honor  of  sonship  are  his. 

There  is,  however,  another  figure  on  the  canvas  that 
remains  to  be  studied.  It  is  that  of  the  elder  son.  He 
has  remained  at  home  and  conducted  himself  in  a  very 
proper  and  decorous  fashion.  None  of  the  neighbors 
have  ever  spoken  ill  of  him,  for  all  have  looked  upon 
him  as  a  model  son.  He  has  been  held  up  as  a  pattern 
to  many  another  young  man  who  has  showed  symptoms 
of  restlessness.  But  has  he  gladdened  his  father's  heart? 
Has  he  afforded  him  comfort  and  sympathy  as  he  grieved 
over  the  absence  of  the  younger  son?  Not  at  all. 
If  he  has  ever  spoken  of  the  absent  one  it  has  always 
been  with  a  tone  of  superiority  and  contempt,  and  with 
words  of  scorn.  He  has  received  every  tale  of  wanton- 
ness and  riot  as  "just  what  was  to  be  expected  from  such 
a  fellow,"  and  every  story  of  want  and  poverty  as  the 
natural  and  righteous  reward  of  such  folly. 

As  for  himself,  he  is  diligent  and  zealous.  He  work=! 
hard  and  with  a  dogged  sort  of  faithfulness.  He  ren- 
ders the  mechanical,  unloving  service  of  a  slave.  Why 
did  he  stay  at  home?  Because  he  knew  that  in  the  long 
run  it  would  be  more  profitable  than  going  away.  It 
was  also  much  more  respectable.  It  was  wiser  in  every 
way.  But  all  the  while  he  felt  that  his  brother  was  hav- 
ing the  best  of  it  so  far  as  real  enjoyment  was  concerned. 

302 


THE  PRODIGAL  AND  THE  DRUDGE 

True,  the  youth  was  spending  his  patrimony,  but  then 
he  was  seeing  Hfe,  he  was  having  a  good  time, 
while  himself,  the  thrifty  elder  brother,  was  laying  up 
money  by  losing  pleasure. 

Read  the  story  once  more  and  see  how  this  spirit  re- 
veals itself.  "His  elder  son  Vv^as  in  the  field."  You 
do  not  catch  him  wasting  his  time  looking  down  the 
road  and  watching  for  the  return  of  the  graceless  young 
scamp  who  had  gone  off  so  long  ago.  There  has  been 
loss  enough  already  and  worry  enough  on  his  account. 
Better  give  all  his  time  and  energy  to  repairing  the  wastes 
and  improving  what  remains  of  the  property. 

Mark  the  contrast  between  the  attitude  of  this  son  and 
the  father.  ''Now  his  elder  son  was  in  the  field" — 
"While  he  was  yet  afar  off,  his  father  saw  him." 
The  father  eager,  hopeful,  ever  watching  for  the  prod- 
igal's return — the  brother  wholly  indifferent  and  think- 
ing only  of  work,  work,  everlasting  work. 

In  the  course  of  his  work  he  happens  to  approach  the 
house  and  he  hears  the  sound  of  merriment  and  joy  and 
asks  what  it  means.  "Thy  brother  is  come ;  and  thy 
father  hath  killed  the  fatted  calf,  because  he  hath  receiv- 
ed him  safe  and  sound."  The  servants  are  infected  with 
the  father's  joyful  spirit.  Does  the  elder  son  catch  the 
enthusiasm?  Does  he  rush  in  to  greet  his  brother  and 
welcome  him  back  again  ?  Not  by  any  means.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  is  angry  that  all  this  fuss  should  be  made  over 
the  fellow's  return.  Why,  it  is  simply  putting  a  pre- 
mium upon  profligacy !  It  is  encouraging  the  young  man 
in  his  evil  course.  The  boy  never  was  good  for  any- 
thing to  work  before  he  went  away  and  he  will  probably 
be  worth  less  than  ever  now.  For  the  elder  brother  can 
think  of  nothing  but  work.  That  is  his  ideal  of  righteous- 
ness and  manhood  and  duty. 

Then  "his  father  came  out,  and  entreated  him.  But 
he  answered  and  said  to  his  father,  Lo,  these  many  years 
do  /  serve  thee  (as  though  he  had  been  a  servant  all  the 

303 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

time  instead  of  a  son),  and  /  never  transgressed  a  com- 
mandment of  thine."  You  see  it  is  all  service  and  obedi- 
ence; not  a  word  about  love  or  filial  kindness  or  sym- 
pathy. "And  yet  thou  never  gavest  me  a  kid,  that  I 
might  make  merry  with  my  friends."  In  other  words, 
"I  have  slaved  and  drudged  and  have  had  no  pleasure. 
I  have  sacrificed  the  true  joy  of  my  life  to  work  for  you. 
although  I  might  have  been  having  a  good  time  like  this 
other  fellow."  "But  when  this  thy  son  (he  does  not  say, 
my  brother),  when  this  thy  son  came,  who  hath  devour- 
ed thy  living  (he  thought  more  of  living  than  of  loving), 
.   .    .  thou  killedst  for  him  the  fatted  calf." 

Do  you  not  see  how  the  real  spiritual  kinship  of  the 
two  brothers  betrays  itself  unconsciously  even  while  the 
elder  makes  no  acknowledgment  in  words?  The  stay- 
at-home  brother  is  not  a  whit  more  loving  than  the  prod- 
igal. Nor  has  he  any  higher  ideal  of  righteousness. 
Both  the  boys  knew  that  to  stay  at  home  was  the  more 
profitable  course  financially  and  morally,  and  both 
thought  that  there  was  more  real  happiness  in  going 
away.  At  home  was  drudgery,  self-sacrifice,  work. 
Abroad  were  life  and  pleasure.  It  was  only  a  question 
as  to  whether  the  game  was  worth  the  candle.  The 
younger  thought  it  was,  the  older  thought  it  was  not. 

The  elder  son,  I  say,  was  just  as  unloving  as  the  young- 
er. It  was  no  pleasure  to  him  to  be  with  his  father.  He 
shows  no  appreciation  of  the  happy  home  and  the  father's 
affection.  He  does  not  realize  that  his  interests  and  the 
father's  are  identical.  If  the  contrast  between  the  prod- 
igal and  the  father  is  sharp,  that  between  the  drudge 
and  the  father  is  equally  sharp. 

To  the  complaining  murmur  of  the  son,  the  father 
replies,  "Son,  thou  art  ever  with  me  (he  at  least  finds 
joy  in  having  the  son  at  home),  and  all  that  is  mine 
is  thine.  But  it  was  meet  to  make  merry  and  be  glad : 
for  this  thy  brother  was  dead,  and  is  alive  again ;  and  was 
lost,  and  is  found."    The  very  exaggerations  of  speech 

304 


THE  PRODIGAL  AND  THE  DRUDGE 

and  the  omission  of  any  hint  at  desertion  and  unkindness 
testify  to  the  boundless  love  of  the  father  and  his  joy 
in  the  return  of  his  son. 

Again  the  picture  is  true  to  the  life ;  for  while  we  are 
often  very  much  concerned  lest  the  sinner  shall  not  be 
sufficiently  conscious  of  and  repentant  for  his  sins,  the 
one  desire  of  the  heavenly  Father  is  for  the  sinner's 
return  and  recovery.  Not  to  make  men  feel  that  they 
have  sinned,  that  they  are  miserable  and  unworthy  crea- 
tures, but  to  win  them  back  from  sin  and  to  restore  them 
to  the  complete  joy  of  home  and  sonship  is  the  great 
aim  of  the  gospel. 

Possibly  some  one  may  feel  that  I  have  turned  aside 
from  the  central  thought  of  the  parable  in  thus  dwelling 
at  length  upon  the  picture  of  the  elder  brother.  I  know 
that  he  is  usually  made  a  secondary  figure,  yes,  that  he 
is  often  spoken  of  as  an  example  of  right  action  in  the 
main,  and  that  the  prodigal  is  brought  to  the  fore  as  the 
chief  personage  in  the  story.  I  know  that  for  ages  the 
Church  of  Christ  has  taken  this  beautiful  and  significant 
parable  and  has  hurled  it  at  outside  sinners  as  though  it 
were  intended  for  them  alone.  But  that  only  proves  be- 
yond dispute  the  continued  existence  of  this  elder- 
brotherly  spirit.  It  only  goes  to  show  that  we,  we  who 
call  ourselves  Christians,  need  to  study  the  parable  and  to 
apply  its  teachings  more  honestly  to  ourselves.  We  call 
it  the  parable  of  The  Prodigal  Son.  The  parable  of  The 
Drudge,  would  be  nearer  the  truth.  I  have  called  it  the 
parable  of  The  Lost  Son  and  I  have  not  specified  which 
son  may  claim  the  title. 

If  the  prodigal  represents  the  irreligious  sinner,  the 
elder  brother  represents  the  religious  sinner.  It  is  the  un- 
loving spirit  of  publican  and  Pharisee  alike  in  contrast 
with  the  loving  spirit  of  God  and  godliness.  The  true 
spirit  of  sonship,  says  the  parable,  is  not  drudging  ser- 
vice, however  faithful  or  fruitful,  but  love  and  sympathy 
with  the  father.     The  test  of  sonship  is  brotherliness. 

305 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

"If  a  man  say,  I  love  God,  and  hateth  his  brother,  he  is 
a  liar:  for  he  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he  hath 
seen,  cannot  love  God  whom  he  hath  not  seen." 

How  many  of  us  there  are  who  think  that  religion  and 
righteousness  consist  in  doing  something!  We  are  en- 
tirely satisfied  with  ourselves  because  we  believe  we  are 
doing  the  things  that  will  please  God.  We  live  very 
proper  lives.  We  serve  God,  being  exceedingly  care- 
ful to  perform  all  the  recognized  duties  and  to  attend  to 
all  the  outward  acts  of  religion,  although  many  times  we 
find  this  service  a  burdensome  cross.  And  we  do  not 
transgress  his  commandments,  staining  our  lives  with 
sin  and  impurity.  We  are  righteously  indignant  because 
some  of  our  neighbors  neglect  to  do  these  right  things ; 
they  are  irreligious,  and,  worse  than  that,  they  are  posi- 
tively sinful;  they  defy  the  laws  of  respectability  and 
morality.  They  have  left  the  Father's  house  and  we  feel 
that  between  us  and  them  there  is  a  great  gulf  which  we 
are  by  no  means  anxious  that  they  should  cross  again. 
Certainly  we  would  not  have  them  cross  it  until  they  are 
fully  sensible  of  their  wrong-doing  and  have  thoroughly 
reformed. 

All  the  while  God  is  saying,  "It  is  not  deeds  nor  creeds 
that  I  want,  but  love."  Loveless  service  is  no  better  than 
open  sin.  The  father  was  glad  when  the  prodigal  re- 
turned; why?  Was  it  because  he  would  now  work  on 
the  old  farm?  Because  he  would  have  two  boys  to  help 
him  with  the  chores  instead  of  one?  No,  it  was  because 
he  loved  the  boy,  and  he  wanted  his  love  in  return.  He 
could  rejoice  even  in  the  poverty  and  hunger  that  the 
lad  had  experienced  if  the  spirit  of  love  had  by  their 
means  been  rekindled  in  his  heart. 

So,  to-day,  God  desires  above  everything  else  that  we 
should  love  him,  that  we  should  enter  into  such  fellowship 
with  the  divine  love  that  we  should  love  everything  and 
everybody  that  God  loves.  He  knows  that  with  the 
spirit  of  love  in  the  heart  all  else  that  is  good  will  fol- 

306 


THE  PRODIGAL  AND  THE  DRUDGE 

low  in  due  order  and  in  good  time.  He  can  do  without 
our  service,  but  without  our  love  neither  his  heart  can 
be  satisfied  nor  our  own  highest  perfection  and  blessing 
attained. 

Great  is  respectability.  Great  are  refinement  and 
culture.  Great  are  piety  and  propriety.  Great  is  benev- 
olent activity.  But  greater  than  all  these,  the  greatest 
thing  in  earth  or  in  heaven  is  love. 


307 


Prayer,  Not  a  Form 
but  a  Force 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

Prayer,  Not  a  Form 
but  a  Force 

THE  FRIEND  AT   MIDNIGHT 
Luke  11:5-8 

Text. — "Because  of  his  importunity  he  'will  arise  and  give  him 
as  many  as  he  needeth.  *' — Luke  11:8 

HAT  is  prayer?  Is  it  a  mere  religious 
ceremony?  A  duty  to  be  performed  be- 
cause God  has  commanded  it?  A  part 
of  an  orderly  and  well  arranged  ritual 
that  gives  dignity  to  the  worship  of  God  ? 
Or  is  it  a  sort  of  magical  charm  by  means  of  which  the 
favored  children  of  God  may  obtain  gifts  of  all  kinds 
without  effort  on  their  own  part  or  reason  on  the  part 
of  the  Giver?  Or  again,  is  it  the  natural  expression  of 
human  need  and  desire,  a  necessary  link  in  the  chain 
that  connects  the  human  with  the  divine,  a  perfectly 
rational  method  of  obtaining  blessings,  whether  spiritual 
or  material,  from  the  heavenly  Father? 

In  all  religious  thought  and  service  prayer  holds  a 
recognized  place,  but  its  relation  to  religion  and  life 
finds  many  and  diverse  interpretations.  Even  among 
Christian  people  ideas  of  prayer  vary  widely.  We  hear 
from  the  pulpits  of  to-day  a  great  variety  of  views 
upon  the  subject,  all  of  which  may  be  included  under 
the  three  interpretations  already  suggested.  There  are 
Christians  to  whom  prayer  is  nothing  but  a  religious 
form,  proper  and  necessary,  but  artificial  and  of  limited 
worth.     Others  look  upon  prayer  as  a  sort  of  Aladdin's 

311 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

lamp  that  brings  all  manner  of  uncaused  and  unmerited 
blessings.  Still  others  see  in  it  the  working  of  a  defi- 
nite spiritual  law,  the  natural  expression  of  desire  that 
works  for  its  own  answer. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  value  of  prayer  in  the 
life  of  any  individual  will  be  largely  determined  by  the 
view  of  prayer  which  he  holds.  But  that  is  not  all.  The 
meaning  and  value  of  religion  itself  are  vitally  involved 
in  this  matter  of  prayer.  Spiritual  growth  and  efficiency 
hinge  upon  right  views  of  the  subject.  False  notions 
of  prayer  hinder  the  full  enjoyment  of  power.  Hence 
it  is  exceedingly  important  that  we  should  discover  and 
accept  the  true  ideal  of  prayer  if  we  desire  to  make  real 
progress  in  the  religious  life  and  to  achieve  worthy  re- 
sults in  the  service  of  the  Master. 

Is  it  strange,  then,  that  the  subject  of  prayer  should 
repeatedly  come  to  the  front  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus? 
It  certainly  would  be  strange  if  he  had  failed  to  empha- 
size by  frequent  mention  a  topic  so  vital  to  the  life  of  the 
Church  that  was  to  spring  from  the  seeds  of  truth  that 
he  was  sowing.  We  are  not,  therefore,  surprised  to  find 
three  striking  parables  devoted  to  the  illustration  of  this 
theme,  not  to  speak  of  the  numerous  more  direct  ex- 
positions. The  parable  of  The  Friend  at  Midnight  is 
the  first  of  this  group  of  three,  and  is  a  general  interpre- 
tation of  the  meaning  of  prayer  and  its  relation  to  life. 
Let  us  note  the  setting  of  the  parable,  for  that  will  help 
us  to  determine  its  precise  meaning. 

Disciples  had  come  to  the  Master  with  the  request, 
"Lord,  teach  us  to  pray,  even  as  John  also  taught  his 
disciples" ;  and  Jesus  in  response  had  given  what  we 
know  as  "The  Lord's  Prayer."  He  does  not,  however, 
stay  with  that.  He  adds  our  parable,  and  continues  with 
a  concise  expression  of  the  law  of  asking  and  receiving, 
after  which  he  concludes  with  an  argument  to  show  the 
willingness  of  God  to  fulfil  the  highest  desires  of  his 
children. 

312 


THE       FRIEND       AT      MIDNIGHT 

The  request  of  the  disciples  indicated  a  false  notion 
regarding  prayer.  We  may  not  say,  perhaps,  that  they 
looked  upon  it  solely  in  the  light  of  a  religious  ceremony, 
deriving  its  significance  from  the  authority  of  their 
leader,  but  we  are  sure  that  they  placed  undue  emphasis 
upon  the  element  of  form.  What  they  desired  was  a 
form  of  prayer.  "Lord,  teach  us  how  to  pray,"  is  the 
literal  meaning  of  their  request. 

What  was  Jesus'  answer?  We  do  not  know  the  pre- 
cise words  he  used.  We  only  know  that  he  so  impressed 
his  hearers  with  the  supreme  importance  of  the  spirit 
of  prayer  that  they  forgot  his  words,  and  the  two  reports 
of  the  model  prayer  differ  essentially  one  from  the  other 
in  form.  More  than  this,  both  reports  are  so  lacking 
in  completeness  and  rhetorical  finish  that  when  the 
Church  wished  to  introduce  the  Lord's  Prayer  into  her 
ritual,  scholarly  ecclesiastics  were  obliged  to  take  the 
fragments  given  us  in  the  Gospels  and  weave  them  to- 
gether, adding  to  them  a  fitting  conclusion  so  that  the 
prayer  might  have  sufficient  form  and  dignity  for  public 
use. 

The  aim  of  Jesus  in  this  entire  discourse  is  not  to  teach 
his  disciples  /low  to  pray,  but  rather  to  teach  them  to 
pray.  And  so  successful  is  he  that  henceforth  in  their 
minds  the  spirit  of  prayer  is  supreme,  and  the  form  of 
prayer  takes  its  natural  and  subordinate  place. 

The  fragmentary  outline  of  prayer  he  follows  with  a 
word  picture  of  which  these  are  the  salient  points: 

A  certain  householder  is  surprised  by  the  unexpected 
arrival  of  a  friend  from  a  distance  late  at  night,  and  at 
a  moment  when  his  larder  happens  to  be  empty.  The 
laws  of  Oriental  hospitality  require  that  he  should  offer 
him  refreshment  before  retiring.  To  fail  in  this  would 
be  to  offer  his  friend  an  unpardonable  insult.  What  is 
to  be  done?  Why,  borrow,  of  course!  The  circum- 
stances do  not  admit  of  doubt  or  hesitation.  So  off  he 
goes  to  the  house  of  a  neighbor,  wakens  him  by  knock- 

313 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

ing  and,  explaining  the  situation,  asks  the  loan  of  three 
loaves.  At  first  and  for  some  time  the  neighbor  refuses 
to  be  disturbed,  but  the  householder  will  not  be  put  off. 
With  an  earnestness  that  admits  of  no  denial  he  contin- 
ues knocking.  Every  minute  the  raps  become  louder 
and  his  demands  more  noisy,  until  at  length  from  sheer 
weariness  the  neighbor  rises  and  gives  him  all  that  he 
asks. 

From  first  to  last  the  picture  is  perfectly  natural.  The 
sense  of  imperative  need  growing  out  of  the  situation 
in  which  he  is  placed  inspires  the  householder's  request, 
determines  its  form  and  justifies  its  persistence  without 
any  premeditation  or  conscious  process  of  thought  on  his 
part.  That  his  effort  was  successful  follows  as  a  matter 
of  course.  There  was  no  time  for  him  to  supply  the 
need  from  his  own  resources  by  making  bread,  and  there 
was  no  opportunity  to  buy,  for  no  shops  were  open  at 
midnight.  He  must  therefore  ask  it  as  a  favor ;  and  the 
circumstances  constitute  a  claim  on  neighborly  kindness 
which  may  reasonably  expect  a  favorable  response. 

"Lord,  teach  us  to  pray,"  say  the  disciples.  And  Jesus 
replies,  in  effect,  "Why,  prayer  is  not  a  matter  for  teach- 
ing and  learning;  it  is  a  spontaneous  expression  of  need 
or  desire,  simple,  natural,  rational.  Just  look  at  this 
householder.  He  illustrates  all  the  elements  of  true 
prayer,  yet  he  had  no  need  of  a  teacher.  He  does  it 
by  instinct.     His  need  is  his  only  instructor." 

For  us,  too,  this  householder  is  the  object-lesson  re- 
garding prayer.  We  may  find  in  him  a  perfect  illustra- 
tion of  the  spirit  and  meaning  of  prayer  quite  as  suffi- 
cient for  modern  life  and  thought  as  for  the  ancient. 
The  consciousness  of  imperative  need  which  we  are  our- 
selves unable  to  supply  will  inspire  the  spirit  and  deter- 
mine the  form  of  all  prayer.  It  will  also  furnish  a 
reasonable  warrant  for  expecting  an  answer  to  our  pray- 
er. The  argument  from  the  general  kindness  of  men  to 
the  infinitely  greater  kindness  of  God  as  manifested  in 

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THE      FRIEND      AT      MIDNIGHT 

his  providence  is  logical  and  affords  a  rational  basis  for 
belief  in  the  power  and  efficacy  of  prayer. 

Now,  as  ever,  errors  regarding  prayer  tend  towards 
two  extremes.  On  the  one  hand  are  those  who  think 
chiefly  of  the  form  of  prayer,  and  to  whom  it  is  pre- 
eminently a  religious  exercise  having  its  end  in  itself. 
On  the  other  hand  are  those  to  whom  prayer  is  a  sort  of 
fetish  by  means  of  which  all  the  resources  of  Omnipo- 
tence are  placed  at  the  disposal  of  their  wishes. 

An  eccentric  preacher  has  said,  "Some  Christians  are 
unwilling  to  pray  in  public  because,  as  they  say,  they 
have  not  the  gift  of  prayer.'*  But  what  is  "the  gift  of 
prayer"?  It  is  beginning  with  "The  Omnipotent  and 
the  Omniscient  and  the  Omnipresent/'  and  ending  with 
"the  everlasting  to  everlasting,  Amen."  Now  the  only 
man  in  Bible  times  who  had  the  gift  of  prayer  according 
to  this  notion  of  it  was  Solomon.  He  made  an  eloquent 
prayer  at  the  dedication  of  the  temple.  But,  after  all, 
Solomon's  piety  was  of  a  more  than  doubtful  quality. 
The  prayers  of  the  real  Bible  saints  were  without  form 
or  comeliness.  Those  godly  souls  wanted  something 
and  they  asked  for  it  in  the  simplest  and  most  direct 
fashion.  The  prayers  of  Jesus  were  unstudied  utter- 
ances of  strong  desire,  usually  very  brief,  and  always 
without  rhetorical  form.  Not  one  of  them  fulfils  the 
modern  ideals;  yet  we  must  recognize  them  as  model 
prayers. 

We  can  never  know  the  true  meaning  and  value  of 
prayer  till  we  break  away  from  this  slavery  to  forms  and 
phrases.  We  must  make  the  spirit  of  prayer  supreme 
in  our  minds.  There  must  be  a  deep  sense  of  need,  an 
overmastering  desire.  These  must  be  great  enough 
wholly  to  overshadow  all  thought  of  form.  When,  like 
the  man  in  the  parable,  we  feel  an  imperative  need  press- 
ing upon  us  which  we  are  unable  to  meet  from  our  own 
resources,   we   will   not   trouble   ourselves   much   about 

315 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

the  exact  form  of  words  with  which  to  express  that  need 
to  Him  who  can  supply  it. 

But  if  formaUsm  destroys  the  value  and  stultifies  the 
meaning  of  prayer  at  one  extreme,  fetishism  is  no  less 
fatal  at  the  other  extreme.  There  are  those  who  talk 
about  prayer  as  though  it  were  a  charm  which  the  Al- 
mighty has  given  to  certain  favored  children  by  means 
of  which  they  may  obtain  any  gift  they  desire  without 
effort  on  their  own  part  or  even  reasonable  necessity. 
The  self-evident  failure  of  many  so-called  prayers  to 
produce  the  desired  results  renders  this  theory  of  prayer 
absurd  to  the  rational  mind.  Such  a  notion  finds  no 
support  in  Jesus'  teaching  about  prayer  as  embodied  in 
our  parable.  That  commends  itself  to  every  thoughtful 
reader  by  its  perfect  reasonableness,  and  leads  directly 
to  his  statement  of  the  general  law  of  asking  and  receiv- 
ing that  follows. 

In  contrast  with  the  excess  of  formalism  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  folly  of  fetishism  on  the  other,  Jesus'  pic- 
ture of  prayer  emphasizes  above  all  things  else  the 
thought  of  naturalness.  It  is  the  expression  of  that  in- 
stinctive spirit  which  prompts  the  child  to  ask  the  sup- 
ply of  its  needs  from  the  parent  or  sends  any  one  of  us 
to  a  friend  when  we  want  a  favor.  It  accords  with  the 
daily  observed  laws  of  nature  and  of  life. 

While  the  householder  embodies  the  spirit  of  true 
prayer  alike  in  his  earnestness  and  his  persistence,  the 
subsequent  explanation  of  our  Lord,  as  well  as  the  in- 
stant judgment  of  our  own  intelligence,  makes  it  clear 
that  we  are  not  to  see  in  the  neighbor  with  his  unwilling- 
ness and  grudging  kindness  a  type  of  God's  attitude 
towards  his  children.  The  necessity  of  prayer  and  per- 
sistence does  not  arise  from  any  unwillingness  on  the 
part  of  God,  but  from  conditions  in  our  own  selves  that 
must  be  overcome  before  we  can  receive  what  we  desire. 

The  facts  that  Jesus  sets  forth  in  this  parable,  taken 
from  well-known  social  relations,  find  continuous  illus- 

316 


THE      FRIEND      AT      MIDNIGHT 

tration  in  the  world  of  nature.  For  the  supply  of  our 
daily  need  we  are  dependent  upon  the  gifts  of  the  Crea- 
tor. Not  the  simplest  requirement  of  life  can  be  met 
entirely  by  our  own  power.  True,  we  can  do  something 
towards  procuring  the  supply,  but  that  something  is 
little  more  than  asking,  seeking,  or  knocking.  On  the 
part  of  the  heavenly  Father  there  is  no  grudging  or  hesi- 
tation. Supplies  abundant,  overflowing,  are  provided  for 
our  every  need;  yet  none  of  these  comes  to  us  without 
some  trifling  effort  on  our  part,  and  for  some  of  them 
we  must  strive  long  and  patiently.  A  man  may  starve  in 
the  midst  of  plenty  if  he  will  not  exert  himself  to  sow  or 
reap  or  gather. 

The  difference  in  the  material  wealth  of  different  men 
is  not  due  to  the  partiality  of  Providence  which  gives 
freely  to  one  and  withholds  from  another.  It  is  due 
rather  to  the  difference  in  personal  energy  or  persistence 
or  wisdom  which  different  men  show  in  seeking  wealth. 
The  man  who  seeks  wealth  earnestly,  untiringly,  finds  it. 
The  man  who  knocks  long  and  loudly  at  the  door  of 
fortune  compels  its  opening.  The  man  who  asks  great 
things  and  brooks  no  denial,  receives  them. 

Prayer  is  not  therefore  an  institution  peculiar  to  re- 
ligion. It  is  the  expression  of  a  law  of  life  universal. 
It  is  a  factor  in  the  life  social  or  commercial  or  political 
which  we  know  by  various  names ;  but  when  we  think  of 
it  in  connection  with  the  life  spiritual,  when  we  raise  it 
to  its  highest  and  purest  form,  we  call  it  prayer.  In  the 
religious  sphere  it  finds  its  supreme  manifestation. 
There  it  rises  above  the  material  and  the  earthly  and 
directly  recognizes  the  fact  of  dependence  upon  God, 
expressing  itself  in  words  of  supplication  or  thanks- 
giving. 

And  this  is  by  no  means  the  least  important  result  of 
prayer,  that  it  deepens  in  our  minds  and  hearts  the  sense 
of  dependence  upon  God  by  calling  forth  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  that  dependence.    We  may  recognize  the  general 

317 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

law  of  asking  and  receiving  in  other  forms  without  ever 
thinking  of  God  at  all.  But  when  our  recognition  takes 
the  specific  form  that  we  call  prayer,  the  very  act  involves 
a  confession  of  God  and  the  soul  receives  a  new  and 
higher  spiritual  impulse. 

When  we  toil  for  any  of  the  manifold  products  of 
labor,  it  may  be  tilling  the  soil  for  a  harvest,  or  digging 
into  the  earth  for  rich  minerals,  or  traveling  the  avenues 
of  trade  for  gain,  we  are  wont  to  attribute  the  results, 
whether  large  or  small,  to  our  own  effort.  We  have 
earned  what  we  enjoy,  so  we  think.  But  a  careful 
scientist  not  many  years  ago  took  several  of  the  more 
common  lines  of  toil,  such  as  agriculture,  mining  and 
commerce,  and  computed  the  proportionate  results  of 
those  which  are  due  to  human  effort  on  the  one  hand  and 
on  the  other  what  is  due  to  the  direct  agency  of  God 
working  through  the  laws  and  forces  of  nature.  What 
was  his  conclusion?  This:  even  in  the  most  toilsome 
and  least  remunerative  lines  of  production  only  a  very 
small  fraction  of  the  result  is  due  to  man's  labor.  That 
is  little  more  than  the  asking.  The  race  could  not  exist 
for  a  single  day  upon  the  unaided  results  of  its  most 
strenuous  effort.  More  than  ninety-five  per  cent  in 
every  case  is  the  free  gift  of  God. 

Prayer  is  not,  therefore,  I  repeat,  a  distinctively  relig- 
ious act,  a  custom  or  institution  that  sets  the  spiritual 
life  apart  from  all  other.  It  is  simply  the  most  perfect- 
ly spiritual  manifestation  of  a  law  that  runs  through 
all  life.  Of  the  three  illustrations  given  by  the  Master, 
one  is  taken  from  the  sphere  of  domestic  or  social  life, 
a  second  from  the  courts  of  law,  and  the  third  from  re- 
ligious life  as  seen  at  the  temple.  What  could  indicate 
more  plainly  that  the  notion  of  prayer  is  quite  in  keep- 
ing with  the  common  experience  of  every  phase  of  daily 
life?  What  could  emphasize  more  clearly  the  fact  that 
praver  is  the  perfectly  natural  expression  of  human  de- 
sire? 

318 


THE       FRIEND      AT      MIDNIGHT 

There  are  some  lessons  that  must  be  learned  anew  with 
every  onward  step  of  our  progress  in  thought  and  life. 
This  is  one  of  them.  The  Christian  disciple  and  the 
Christian  Cliurch  of  to-day  need  to  learn  the  lesson  cf 
prayer  just  as  truly  as  those  first  disciples  needed  to 
learn  it.  With  the  progress  of  the  centuries  and  the  in- 
creasing prevalence  of  Christian  civilization  we  are  be- 
coming wondrously  well  satisfied  with  ourselves.  The 
sense  of  dependence  upon  God,  the  consciousness  of 
imperative  need,  weigh  less  heavily  upon  us  than  upon 
those  who  have  lived  in  less  favorable  times.  We  are  no 
longer  pressed  with  overwhelming  desires  for  God's 
blessing. 

With  the  decline  of  the  sense  of  need  and  the  eager- 
ness of  desire  the  spirit  of  prayer  wanes.  Individual 
prayer  is  becoming  less  common  and  less  importunate. 
The  prayer-meeting  languishes.  Other  forms  of  service 
are  being  substituted  for  it.  We  are  beginning  to  look 
to  education  and  ecclesiastical  machinery  as  the  omnip- 
otent forces  for  completing  the  redemption  of  the 
world.  And  so  the  Church  of  the  twentieth  century  is 
fast  becoming  a  prayerless  Church.  With  new  meaning 
and  more  intelligent  purpose  we  need  to  repeat  for  our- 
selves the  request  of  those  primitive  Christians  — 

"O  thou  through  whom  we  come  to  God, — 
The  Life,  the  Truth,  the  Way, — 
The  path  of  prayer  Thyself  hast  trod ; 
Lord,  teach  us  now  to  pray." 


319 


The  Power  of 
Persistence 


CHAPTER    XXV 

The  Power  of 
Persistence 

THE   IMPORTUNATE   WIDOW 

Luke  18:1-8 

Text. — "  Men  ought  alnvays  to  pray,  and  not  to  faint.  " — Luke  18:1 

OME  Bible  doctrines  men  accept  all  too  readily. 
Others  they  are  very  slow  to  accept.  That  is 
to  say,  certain  truths  are  welcomed  with  eager- 
ness, but  are  taken  in  a  superficial  manner  by 
the  majority  of  disciples,  and  their  truth  is  se- 
riously distorted,  while  other  truths  equally  vital  are 
crowded  out  of  our  life.  Here  are  one  or  two  illus- 
trations in  point. 

The  injunction,  "Wait  on  the  Lord,"  seems  to  many 
minds  the  quintessence  of  the  gospel,  and  the  whole  life 
is  spent  in  waiting  with  nothing  received  and  nothing 
done.  The  phrase,  "Not  my  will,  but  thine,  be  done," 
which  upon  the  lips  of  Jesus  expressed  profound  humil- 
ity and  submission,  has  been  so  misused  as  to  utterly 
vitiate  the  meaning  and  purpose  of  prayer.  Humility 
readily  shades  into  distrust  and  resignation  into  in- 
difference. \\''e  smile  at  the  story  of  the  little  boy  who, 
at  the  end  of  an  unusually  naughty  day,  was  advised  to 
ask  God  to  make  him  a  better  boy  and  prayed  thus,  "O 
Lord,  please  make  me  a  good  boy,"  then,  after  an  im- 
pressive pause,  "Nevertheless^  not  my  will,  but  thine, 
be  done";  yet  his  prayer  was  very  like  many  that  we 
l:ear  from  the  lips  of  children  of  older  growth. 

323 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

On  the  other  hand,  the  duty  of  persistence  and  per- 
severance, especially  when  applied  to  prayer,  meets  with 
increasing  objection  in  the  minds  of  Christian  people. 
We  are  easily  persuaded  that  it  savors  of  dictation  or 
presumption.  This  is  particularly  true  of  the  most  in- 
telligent Christians  of  the  present  day.  The  primitive 
Church  did  not  hesitate  to  pray  earnestly  and  persistent- 
ly for  desired  blessings.  Witness  the  daily  gatherings 
with  prayer  for  the  Holy  Spirit  that  preceded  the  mar- 
velous display  at  Pentecost,  and  the  similar  gatherings 
to  pray  for  the  deliverance  of  imprisoned  Peter  that 
continued  until  he  knocked  at  the  door  a  free  man. 

One  must  search  long  and  diligently  to  find  the  paral- 
lel of  these  gatherings  now-a-days.  Occasionally  we 
hear  of  protracted  meetings,  but  they  are  confined  for 
the  most  part  to  extremists  or  to  the  less  cultured  por- 
tions of  the  Church.  Among  the  most  intelligent  and 
rational  disciples  individual  prayer  is  brief  and  well 
pruned,  and  as  for  the  prayer-meeting,  that  has  its  fixed 
hours  and  begins  and  ends  very  promptly  by  the  clock, 
often  having  a  carefully  prepared  program  that  gives 
more  time  to  song  and  speech  than  to  prayer.  Woe  be- 
tide the  leader  who  permits  a  meeting  to  run  over  time 
that  the  tide  of  prayer  may  sweep  on  unhindered !  He 
will  quickly  hear  remarks  about  "religious  dissipation," 
and  if  he  does  not  heed  these  another  leader  will  soon 
take  his  place. 

Now  Jesus  plainly  had  no  fear  of  appearing  presump- 
tuous. With  an  agony  of  earnestness  he  thrice  repeated 
the  same  prayer,  and  that  for  release  from  the  great 
trial  of  his  life.  Even  though  he  used  the  phrase  "Not 
my  will,  but  thine,  be  done,"  he  persisted  in  the  prayer 
till  he  received  an  answer ;  for  "there  appeared  unto 
him  an  angel  from  heaven,  strengthening  him."  And 
what  he  illustrates  in  that  prayer  he  enjoins  in  his  teach- 
ing as  do  the  sacred  writers  in  many  parts  of  Scripture. 
What  is  the  meaning  of  that  striking  scene  in  the  life  his- 

324 


THE        IMPORTUNATE       WIDOW 

tory  of  Jacob,  where  he  wrestles  all  night  with  the  angel, 
and  as  the  morning  dawns  cries  out,  "I  will  not  let  thee 
go,  except  thou  bless  me?"  Does  it  not  say  in  clearest 
tones,  "Hold  on  to  the  Lord  until  the  blessing  comes?" 
No  other  interpretation  of  the  incident  can  be  entertained 
for  a  moment  by  any  intelligent  reader. 

Do  we  not  get  a  hint  of  the  same  suggestion  in  the 
parable  of  The  Friend  at  Midnight?  True,  it  is  not  the 
central  lesson  of  that  story,  but  it  is  surely  incidental. 
As  we  see  the  householder  repulsed  in  his  first  appeal 
yet  continuing  to  knock  and  to  plead,  as  we  hear  his 
knocks  increasing  in  violence  with  every  minute  of  de- 
lay until  he  fairly  thunders  at  the  door  and  threatens 
to  arouse  the  whole  neighborhood,  and  so  brings  down 
the  surly  neighbor,  the  lesson  of  persistence  and  im- 
portunity forces  itself  upon  us. 

Yet  again,  the  apostle  sums  up  the  whole  matter  in 
three  words :  ''Pray  without  ceasing,"  a  motto  that 
might  well  be  written  over  the  door  of  many  a  modern 
church,  from  which  the  spirit  and  practise  of  prayer 
have  long  since  departed. 

The  parable  of  The  Widow  and  the  Unjust  Judge 
is  another  word  upon  the  same  subject.  It  has  no  other 
thought  than  this — persistence.  St.  Luke  explicitly  de- 
clares its  purpose  by  way  of  introduction.  "He  spake 
a  parable  unto  them  to  this  end,  that  men  ought  always 
to  pray,  and  not  to  faint."  Upon  this  thought  every 
detail  of  the  parable  reflects  its  light.  It  is  not  a  pic- 
ture of  our  relations  with  God.  The  figures  in  the  para- 
ble are  not  representative  of  God  on  the  one  hand  and 
man  on  the  other.  Rather  does  the  whole  scene  stand 
out  in  vivid  contrast  with  the  relations  between  the 
heavenly  Father  and  his  child.  But  in  this  very  contrast 
we  find  a  striking  presentation  of  one  element  of  true 
prayer.  The  one  lesson  of  the  parable  is  persistence, 
— the  need  and  power  of  persistence. 

Purooselv  the  judge,  indifferent  and  unjust,  is  placed 

325 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

over  against  the  just  and  provident  God.  It  is  selfish- 
ness in  contrast  with  love,  unrighteousness  in  contrast 
with  holiness,  unwillingness  in  contrast  with  eagerness. 
Yet  persistence  prevails.  Notwithstanding  the  odds 
against  her,  the  widow  persists  in  her  pleading  until  at 
length  from  sheer  weariness  on  the  part  of  the  judge 
her  prayer  is  granted.  The  inference  is  plain ;  yes,  un- 
avoidable. If,  with  all  the  odds  against  her,  with  the 
sympathy  and  perhaps  the  interests  of  the  judge  else- 
where engaged  and  no  scruples  in  action,  persistence 
wins  her  point,  how  much  more  certainly  will  one  win  his 
desire  who  comes  to  a  just  and  loving  God!  If  per- 
sistence wins  in  conflict  with  selfishness,  tyranny  and 
caprice,  how  much  more  certain  is  it  to  succeed  when  it 
is  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  unvarying  law  of  a  kind 
and  beneficent  Providence! 

The  Power  of  Persistent  Prayer  is  therefore  the  theme 
which  our  parable  presents  for  our  consideration.  And 
the  story  teaches  us  first: 

That  it  is  right  to  persist  in  prayer.  The  writer's  prefa- 
tory explanation  of  the  purpose  of  the  parable  makes 
this  inference  unavoidable.  "He  spake  a  parable  unto 
them  to  this  end,  that  men  ought  always  to  pray,  and  not 
to  faint."  This  truth  calls  for  emphasis  to-day  as  never 
before.  We  are  too  ready  to  limit  the  duty  and  belittle 
the  value  of  prayer.  We  are  terribly  afraid  that  we  shall 
appear  presumptuous.  We  greatly  exaggerate  or  mis- 
interpret the  duty  of  resignation.  When  we  have  asked 
once  for  a  blessing,  and  that  in  a  very  cool  and  impassive 
fashion,  we  consider  our  duty  done,  and  with  an  unbe- 
fieving  sigh  we  resign  the  whole  matter  to  the  divine 
v/ill. 

It  is  not  strange  if  faith  in  prayer  diminishes  as  the 
fear  of  persistence  increases;  for  the  value  of  prayer 
and  the  right  of  persistence  in  prayer  rest  upon  the  same 
evidence.  Every  witness  to  the  power  of  prayer  in  hu- 
man life  is  also  a  witness  to  the  efficacy  of  persistence. 

326 


THE       IMPORTUNATE       WIDOW 

Not  a  saint  in  all  the  calendar  of  those  who  have  proven 
the  worth  of  prayer  but  also  illustrates  our  theme  of  per- 
sistent prayer. 

See  Abraham  pleading  for  Sodom  over  and  over  again 
till  he  obtains  assurance  that  the  presence  of  ten  righteous 
persons  shall  save  the  city  from  destruction.  See  David 
praying  with  fasting  and  tears  for  the  life  of  his  child 
until  the  child's  death  makes  it  clear  that  his  prayer  is 
not  to  prevail.  See  the  apostle  Paul  entreating  the 
Lord  thrice  for  the  removal  of  his  "thorn  in  the  flesh," 
and  ceasing  to  pray  only  when  he  receives  a  definite 
answer  from  God  with  the  promise  of  grace  sufficient 
for  his  burden. 

Jesus  himself  was  not  afraid  of  seeming  presumptuous. 
As  he  prayed  in  tl:e  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  v/e  are  told 
first  that  he  prayed  with  such  earnestness  that  he  sweat 
as  it  were  great  drops  of  blood  falling  to  the  ground. 
Not  only  so,  but  failing  to  receive  an  assurance  of  the 
de-ired  answer,  he  repeated  his  prayer  again  and  again. 
All  three  times  he  used  the  same  words.  No  fear  of 
repetition  had  he.  Why?  Because  he  asked  for  just  what 
he  wanted  in  the  simplest  manner  possible,  and  there 
was  no  call  for  a  change.  Not  elegant  wording  but 
plain  expression  of  intense  desire  was  his  thought.  How 
many  of  us  would  venture  to  repeat  a  prayer  for  any 
blessing  thrice  in  precisely  the  same  words?  So  seldom 
does  desire  for  blessing  overshadow  our  anxiety  about 
forms. 

Who  can  say  how  many  times  Jesus  spent  the  en- 
tire night  in  prayer?  Not  once  nor  twice,  but  repeatedly 
in  the  Gospels  we  are  told  that  he  separated  himself 
from  all  companionship  and  prayed  all  the  night  long. 
There  is  persistence  exemplified  again  and  again.  And 
its  effect  appears  in  the  wonderful  days  of  teaching  or 
miracle  that  followed  these  nights  of  prayer. 

Yes,  it  is  right,  it  is  Christian,  to  persist  in  prayer. 
The  Word  of  God  gives  us  repeated  warrant  for  persist- 

327 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

ence.  From  the  days  of  Abraham  to  the  present,  God's 
blessings  have  come  to  those  who  have  "held  the  fleet 
angel  fast"  until  the  request  was  granted.  And  this 
lesson  confronts  us  at  the  very  threshold  as  we  study 
the  parable  before  us. 

Again,  our  parable  implies  that  it  is  necessary  to  per- 
sist in  prayer.  Why  necessary?  Because  God  is  unwill- 
ing to  grant  our  desires?  No,  never!  God  is  always 
more  willing  to  give  us  the  things  that  minister  to  our 
highest  welfare  than  we  are  to  ask  for  them.  The  ne- 
cessity is  in  ourselves.  We  are  wanting  in  the  spirit 
of  true  prayer.  We  are  not  thoroughly  in  earnest.  We 
are  actuated  by  false  motives  and  superficial  purposes. 
We  cherish  wrong  desires.  Our  spiritual  life  and  experi- 
ence are  imperfect.  And  often  the  condition  of  persistent 
prayer  is  the  only  method  of  correcting  these  errors  in 
us.  By  this  means  our  purpose  is  deepened,  our  vision 
clarified,  and  we  are  fitted  to  make  worthy  use  of  the 
blessing  when  it  comes  to  us.  By  this  means,  too,  we 
are  sometimes  led  to  see  that  our  wishes  are  mistaken 
and  the  blessing  sought,  a  curse. 

Not  seldom  the  fault  is  with  our  faith.  Now  do  not 
make  the  mistake  of  picturing  God  as  delaying  his  an- 
swers to  prayer  simply  to  try  our  faith.  That  were  a 
spirit  unworthy  the  divine  character.  Many  times  have 
we  seen  some  person  old  enough  to  know  better  hold- 
ing out  a  tempting  gift  to  a  little  child,  it  may  be  a  pretty 
toy  or  some  sweetmeat  or  fruit,  and  carefully  keeping  it 
just  beyond  the  reach  of  the  little  fingers  eagerly  stretched 
out  to  take  it,  for  the  poor  pleasure  of  teasing  the  helpless 
infant.  Is  there  anything  Godlike  in  such  an  action? 
Far  from  it.  The  spirit  of  teasing  is  simply  devilish. 
Let  us  then  be  very  careful  that  we  do  not  represent  God 
as  treating  his  children  in  a  similar  manner.  Yet  that 
is  really  what  is  meant  by  the  common  expression,  "He 
waits  to  try  our  faith."  No.  no;  God  does  not  withhold 
blessings  to  try  our  faith.   No  need  of  that.    But  he  often 

328 


THE       IMPORTUNATE       WIDOW 

delays  his  answers  for  the  purpose  of  developing  our 
faith,  or  to  remove  some  obstacle  to  the  fullest  granting 
of  our  desires. 

Persistence  in  prayer  intensifies  desire  for  the  bless- 
ing sought.  Very  often  we  pray  for  blessings  when  our 
desire  is  but  slight.  Were  the  blessings  bestowed  at 
once  we  should  value  them  lightly  and  perhaps  we  should 
use  them  unwisely.  But  as  their  bestowal  is  delayed  our 
desire  grows  more  intense.  As  day  after  day  passes  we 
learn  to  appreciate  more  fully  the  value  of  that  which  we 
seek,  until  at  length  when  it  comes  we  are  fitted  to  use 
it  to  the  very  best  possible  advantage. 

Before  he  parted  from  his  disciples,  Jesus  gave  them 
the  promise  of  power  from  on  high,  and  bade 
them  tarry  in  Jerusalem  until  they  should  receive  it. 
Yet,  after  his  ascension,  they  met  in  an  upper  chamber 
and  prayed  for  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise  and  no 
power  came.  Again  they  met  and  prayed,  and  still  no 
power.  Thus  for  ten  days.  Do  you  suppose  that  those 
prayer-meetings  remained  on  the  same  level  throughout 
the  ten  days,  that  there  was  no  change,  no  progress  dur- 
ing that  time?  That  were  absurd,  unthinkable.  No, 
you  can  easily  follow  the  growth  of  the  spirit  and  ut- 
terance of  prayer  in  each  meeting.  Day  by  day  their 
eagerness  grew  more  intense.  Day  by  day  their  prayers 
were  more  urgent.  Doubtless,  too,  there  were  deep 
questionings,  self-examinations,  fresh  consecrations  and 
more  complete  surrenders,  until,  when  on  the  tenth  day 
the  gift  was  poured  out  upon  them  in  an  overwhelming 
tide,  they  were  prepared  to  make  use  of  it  for  the  sal- 
vation of  thousands. 

The  supreme  obstacle  to  spiritual  blessing  is  our  in- 
difference. Wishes  we  have  and  half-hearted  desires, 
but  we  are  seldom  moved  by  an  intense  yearning.  We 
know  little  of  that  sort  of  prayer  that  wearies  the  body 
and  exhausts  the  vital  power.  Such  intensity  of  desire 
as  wrings  the  bloody  sweat  from  the  brow  or  leaves  its 

329 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

impress  in  a  halting  limb,  or  forgets  hunger  for  many 
days  and  nights,  is  an  unknown  factor  in  the  religious 
life  of  to-day.  Our  prayers  are  brief  and  formal.  We  are 
more  concerned  about  propriety  of  form  than  about  def- 
initeness  of  object.  For  this  reason  persistence  is  often 
necessary  to  overcome  our  indifference  and  to  kindle 
in  us  worthy  desires  for  God's  blessing. 

Once  more,  cur  parable  is  a  promise  that  persistent 
prayer  will  prevail.  Purposely  the  judge  is  put  in  sharp 
contrast  with  God.  He  is  drawn  with  a  most  ungodly 
character.  He  is  pictured  as  wholly  selfish  and  sordid. 
as  utterly  lacking  in  principle,  as  thoroughly  hard-heart- 
ed. Yet  he  yields  to  the  persistency  of  the  widow.  He 
is  conquered  by  it. 

What  is  the  inevitable  argument?  First,  it  is  from 
the  unwillingness  of  the  judge  in  contrast  to  the  will- 
ingness of  God.  If  persistence  can  prevail  over  selfish 
unwillingness,  how  much  more  certainly  will  it  prevail 
with  One  who  is  more  than  willing  to  bestow  the  best 
gifts !  Such  characters  as  that  of  the  judge  are  com- 
mon enough  in  any  age  and  land,  and  the  conquering 
power  of  persistence  does  not  lack  for  illustration  at  any 
time.  Equally  evident  is  the  continuous  kindness  of  di- 
vine Providence  ministering  to  the  daily  needs  of  God's 
children,  and  holding  in  store  gifts  infinitely  greater 
than  those  already  enjoyed.  Along  the  line  of  simple 
benevolence  the  argument  of  the  parable  is  unanswerable ; 
and  for  many  that  is  sufficient. 

There  is,  however,  another  point  from  which  we  may 
view  it.  We  have  here  a  contrast  between  the  mere 
caprice  of  a  tyrant  and  the  absolute  trustworthiness  of  a 
divine  Ruler  who  always  works  according  to  a  fixed  and 
beneficent  law.  That  persistence  will  prevail  even  over 
selfish  and  unscrupulous  caprice  is  a  fact  commonly  ob- 
Ferved,  but  not  an  invariable  rule.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
reward  of  persistence  under  the  reign  of  divine  law  is 
absolutely  certain.    The  stone-cutter  strikes  a  huge  block 

330 


THE       IMPORTUNATE      WIDOW 

of  granite  with  his  hammer,  and  there  is  no  perceptible 
result.  But  he  strikes  it  again,  blow  upon  blow,  ten, 
twenty,  thirty,  fifty  times.  All  the  while  the  block  of 
ftone  seems  unaffected,  but  in  time,  it  may  be  at  the 
fiftieth  blow,  the  block  falls  in  two.  In  that  case  there 
has  been  no  increase  in  either  force  or  speed  of  the 
blows ;  just  a  steady,  tireless  repetition.  And  per- 
sistence wins.  The  workman  is  sure  of  the  result.  He 
does  not  know  precisely  how  many  blows  will  be  re- 
quired. He  does  not  count.  He  only  strikes  and  keeps 
on  striking  till  the  great  block  falls  apart. 

When  human  prayer  and  desire  and  effort  are  in  har- 
mony with  divine  law  there  can  be  no  question  as  to 
the  ultimate  result.  To  reach  the  result  may  take  a  long 
time,  may  demand  much  labor  and  sacrifice,  may  tax  tlie 
faith  and  patience  of  the  seeker.  But  failure  is  impossible 
to  him  who  persists.  The  ringing-  declaration  of  a  great 
general,  "I  will  fight  it  out  on  this  line  if  it  takes  all 
summer,"  was  a  sure  prophecy  of  triumph  before  the 
summer  was  gone.  And  many  and  wonderful  have  been 
the  triumphs  secured  by  persistent  and  earnest  prayer. 

Want  of  persistence  in  prayer  indicates  want  of  faith. 
True,  we  often  satisfy  ourselves  with  the  notion  that  it 
is  humility  and  submission  to  God's  will  that  causes  us 
to  cease  from  praying.  But  why  should  humility  cause 
us  to  cease  so  long  as  we  receive  no  answer  nor  any 
indication  of  God's  will?  Jesus  prayed  again  and  again. 
Paul  prayed  repeatedly.  Why  should  not  we  do  the  same  ? 
We  have  reason  to  expect  some  clear  and  satisfactory 
answer  to  every  prayer  we  offer.  Unanswered  prayer 
is  meaningless.  Yet  is  not  much  of  our  prayer  unan- 
swered? Is  it  not  true  that  we  often  pray  without  ex- 
pecting any  answer? 

Now-a-days  there  is  a  great  deal  of  unbelief  in  the 
real  power  of  prayer.  We  have  come  to  think  of  prayer 
as  a  mere  religious  ceremony  to  be  performed  because  it 
is  commanded.     That  prayer  has  a  certain  value,  chiefly 

3B1 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

due  to  its  reflex  influence  upon  him  who  prays,  we  are 
ready  enough  to  beHeve.  But  many  of  us  are  skeptical 
as  to  its  direct  efficacy.  We  have  been  accustomed  to 
think  of  the  reign  of  law  as  nullifying  the  power  of  pray- 
er, whereas  we  should  see  in  prayer  one  phase  of  the 
working  of  divine  law. 

One  reason  only  should  cause  us  to  hesitate  regarding 
any  prayer  that  we  offer,  and  that  is  a  doubt  as  to  wheth- 
er what  we  ask  is  in  accordance  with  the  divine  will. 
Now  there  are  some  things  which  do  not  admit  of  this 
doubt.  When  we  pray  for  our  own  spiritual  growth  or 
sanctification,  or  for  a  revival  of  God's  work  in  the 
world,  we  know  that  these  things  are  in  accordance  with 
the  will  of  God.  We  cannot  therefore  be  too  persistent 
or  too  earnest  in  praying  for  these. 

If  there  is  delay  in  receiving  an  answer  to  such  prayers 
the  fault  must  be  ours.  We  must  be  wrong  at  some 
point.  Either  we  are  not  sufficiently  in  earnest  or  we 
are  not  prepared  for  our  part  in  the  blessing.  What 
remains?  To  cease  praying?  No.  We  should  con- 
tinue to  pray  till  we  are  right,  and  when  we  are  right 
the  blessing  will  surely  come. 


332 


Exaltation  Through 
Humility 


CHAPTER    XXVI 

Exaltation  Through 
Humihty 

THE    PHARISEE   AND   THE    PUBLICAN 

Luke  18:9-14 

Text. — "E'very  one  that  exalteth  himself  shall  be  humbled  •,  but  he  thm 
humbleth  himself  shall  be  exalted.  " — Luke  18 :  14 

■^//£  -way  up  is  doiun."  To  reach  the  greatest 
heights  we  must  first  plunge  into  the  lowest 
depths.  This  is  often  true  in  a  bad  sense. 
Men  mount  to  the  pinnacles  of  worldly  suc- 
cess by  first  descending  to  the  depths  of 
meanness  or  dishonesty.  They  attain  the  heights 
of  fame  or  wealth  or  glory  only  when  honor  and 
truth  and  righteousness  have  been  sunk  wholly  out  of 
sight  or  trampled  under  foot.  They  grovel  in  the  dirt 
as  the  condition  of  being  lifted  to  a  throne. 

But  it  is  equally  true  in  a  good  sense.  Before  we  can 
ascend  the  mountain  tops  of  heavenly  glory  we  must 
go  down  into  the  valley  of  humiliation.  Before  we  can 
enjoy  the  blessed  fellowship  of  the  risen  Christ,  we 
must  lie  prostrate  at  the  foot  of  Calvary's  cross.  Was 
it  not  Wesley  who  sang, 

"Sink  me  to  perfection's  heights"? 

Whoever  said   it,   had   certainly   discovered  one  essen- 
tial condition  of  all  highest  attainment.      Exaltation  comes 
only  as  the  reward  of  humility. 
This  is  the  essential  truth  illustrated  by  the  story  of 

3.35 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

The  Pharisee  and  the  Publican.  It  is  not  primarily  a 
parable  of  prayer,  as  is  that  wkich  immediately  precedes 
it.  The  prayer  is  really  incidental;  but  as  an  incident 
it  is  at  once  so  prominent  and  suggestive  that  many 
readers  wholly  lose  sight  of  the  deeper  and  broader 
theme  of  the  story.  The  evangelist  carefully  explains 
that  the  parable  is  spoken  to  "certain  who  trusted  in 
themselves  that  they  were  righteous,  and  set  all  others 
at  nought."  And  the  parable  apiplies  itself  broadly  in 
the  words,  ''Every  one  that  exalteth  himself  shall  be 
humbled;  but  he  that  humbleth  himself  shall  be  exalt- 
ed." 

The  truth  contained  in  these  words  is  susceptible  of 
the  widest  application  in  life.  It  might  have  been  illus- 
trated by  a  picture  taken  from  almost  any  one  of  the 
numberless  phases  of  human  life  and  action,  but  our 
Lord  chooses  for  its  expression  and  enforcement  an  in- 
cident of  prayer.  He  sees  two  men  of  widely  different 
character  and  spirit  engaging  in  a  familiar  act  of  wor- 
ship at  the  temple.  He  notes  the  air  with  which  they  come 
to  the  sacred  place.  He  observes  their  attitude  and 
hears  their  words  as  they  pray.  And  he  goes  forth  with 
them  to  mark  the  results  of  their  service.  Among  all 
the  parables  of  the  New  Testament  there  is  none  sim- 
pler, none  more  direct  and  universal  in  its  application 
than  this,  and  few,  if  any,  have  been  more  popular. 

In  the  parable  we  note  three  contrasts  which  serve 
to  bring  out  its  meaning  and  to  impress  its  lesson.  They 
are: — 

a.  Contrasted  men, 

b.  Contrasted  prayers,  and 

c.  Contrasted  results. 

First  we  are  struck  by  the  vivid  contrast  between  the 
men  who  come  to  the  temple  to  pray.  Before  us  stand 
two  men  of  antipodal  characters.  "The  one  a  Pharisee, 
and  the  other  a  publican,"  i.  e.,  the  one  a  good  man  and 

336 


THE   PHARISEE   AND  THE    PUBLICAN 

the  other  a  bad  man.  Let  us  study  these  figures  for  a  mo- 
ment. 

Here  is  the  Pharisee — the  good  man.  Do  not  look 
surprised.  Do  not  rise  up  and  declare  that  he  was  not 
a  good  man.  Listen  to  his  own  statement.  "I  am  not 
unjust,  or  an  extortioner,  or  an  adulterer.  I  fast  twice 
in  the  week;  I  give  tithes  of  all  that  I  get." 

"Oh,  the  hypocrite!"  you  say.  No,  no.  Jesus  does 
not  say  that  he  was  a  hypocrite.  He  does  not  hint  at 
such  a  thing.  We  are  left  to  believe  that  the  man  spoke 
the  truth,  and,  without  any  evidence  to  the  contrary, 
we  are  bound  to  believe  him.  More  than  that,  if  we  con- 
sider the  matter  a  little  more  carefully  we  shall  see  that 
the  significance  of  the  story  is  enhanced  when  we  take 
the  man  at  his  word,  and  realize  that  he  was  really  a 
most  respectable  and  religious  person.  Yes,  let  us  take 
his  story  as  he  tells  it,  and  as  Jesus  has  given  it  to  us. 

And  what  a  record  that  was !  He  was  a  just  man ;  he 
was  kind;  he  was  pure;  he  was  temperate  and  benevo- 
lent— a  good  business  man,  a  good  neighbor,  a  good  citi- 
zen, a  good  churchman.  How  many  members  of  the 
Christian  Church  in  this  twentieth  century  could  give 
as  good  an  account  of  themselves  and  give  it  honestly? 
When  such  a  one  comes  into  any  community  he  is  wel- 
comed with  open  arms,  is  accounted  a  model  Chris- 
tian, is  invited  to  join  the  church,  and  we  are  ready  to 
overlook  a  good  degree  of  self-satisfaction  in  his  case. 

He  is  here,  close  to  us ;  for  when  we  saw  him  coming 
we  moved  along  and  made  room  for  him  in  our  pew. 
He  was  just  the  person  we  wanted  to  sit  beside  us.  He 
is  evidently  very  respectable  company. 

Over  there  is  the  bad  man — the  publican.  Bad,,  I  say, 
for  he  himself  confesses  it.  His  business  was  bad.  No- 
body but  a  traitor  to  his  country  would  accept  the  office  of 
publican.  He  was  about  as  disreputable  as  the  rum- 
seller  of  to-day.  His  business  was  probably  conducted 
badly.     Having  thrown  overboard  his  self-respect  when 

337 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

he  took  up  the  business,  dishonesty,  greed,  oppression, 
and  kindred  sins  would  quickly  find  a  place  in  his  life 
and  conduct.  A  traitor  alike  to  his  country  and  his  re- 
ligion, he  would  not  be  a  desirable  neighbor  or  a  useful 
member  of  society.  His  description  of  himself  is  brief 
and  is  striking  as  it  is  brief.  "Me,  the  sinner."  No 
need  of  going  into  details.  That  tells  the  who4e  sad 
story.  The  Pharisee  told  the  truth  about  himself;  the 
publican  did  the  same.    The  contrast  is  instructive. 

Turn  now  to  the  second  contrast,  equally  striking, 
equally  suggestive.  It  is  the  contrast  between  two  pray- 
ers. The  good  man  makes  a  very  bad  prayer,  so  bad  a 
prayer  in  fact  that  we  can  scarcely  call  it  a  prayer  at  all. 
Better  is  the  definition  of  the  poet: — 

"Two  went  to  pray?     O,  rather  say, 
One  went  to  brag,  the  other  to  pray." 

That  is  the  precise  truth.  The  Pharisee  did  not  pray — 
he  boasted;  he  proclaimed  his  own  goodness. 

To  pray — what  is  it?  To  want  something  and  to 
ask  for  it.  The  Pharisee  was  not  conscious  of  any 
want,  and  he  did  not  ask  for  anything.  He  has  all 
that  he  wishes  and  is  satisfied.  His  words  are  an  in- 
ventory of  wealth  rather  than  a  catalogue  of  wants. 
Oh,  but  he  is  giving  thanks;  and  is  not  thanksgiving 
a  form  of  true  prayer?  Certainly,  all  true  prayer  in- 
volves the  spirit  of  thanksgiving;  but  there  is  no  real 
thanksgiving  here.  To  be  sure,  our  Pharisee  says, 
"God.  I  thank  thee";  but  does  he  really  thank  God  for 
anything?  Not  at  all.  He  doesn't  mention  anything 
that  God  has  given  him  or  has  done  for  him.  He 
speaks  about  what  "I  am"  and  what  "I  have  done." 
"I  am  good."  "I  fast  and  give  tithes."  Why  should  he 
thank  God  for  that?  Himself  deserves  the  credit  and 
the  thanks,  so  far  as  appears  from  his  own  statement. 
He  does  not  mention  the  agency  of  God  in  producing 

338 


THE    PHARISEE   AND  THE    PUBLICAN 

these  excellent  results.  There  is  not  the  remotest  hint 
of  real  gratitude  in  his  utterance. 

Then^  too,  he  is  more  occupied  with  others  than  with 
himself.  First,  he  includes  all  other  men  in  the  general 
accusation  of  sinfulness.  Then  his  eye  lights  on  the 
publican  standing  at  a  distance,  and  he  comments  upon 
his  special  wickedness.  Now  a  man  never  comes  near 
to  God  when  his  mind  is  wandering  hither  and  thither 
in  censorious  criticism  of  his  fellow  men.  In  prayer  we 
look  up  in  aspiration  or  we  look  down  in  humility;  we 
never  look  around  in  criticism  or  curiosity.  It  is  a 
poor  prayer  that  exalts  self  even  under  pretense  of 
gratitude,  and  that  is  not  winged  with  some  deep  con- 
sciousness of  need  and  desire,  a  poor  prayer  that  takes 
cognizance  of  others  unless  it  be  to  bear  them  up  in  its 
loving  outreach  of  sympathy  and  intercession. 

Nov/  listen  to  the  prayer  of  the  bad  man.  It  is  an 
exceedingly  good  prayer.  "God  be  merciful  to  me,  the 
sinner"  (for  that  is  the  literal  rendering).  There  is 
humility.  "He  stands  afar  off,"  "Would  not  lift  up  so 
much  as  his  eyes  unto  heaven,"  "Smote  upon  his  breast." 
Then  he  wants  something,  and  is  very  earnest  about  it. 
So  earnest  is  he  in  his  quest  and  so  absorbed  in  his 
approach  to  God  that  he  is  wholly  unconscious  of  any 
other  presence  in  the  temple.  He  does  not  even  per- 
ceive the  Pharisee  standing  near  the  altar.  He  speaks 
as  though  he  were  the  only  sinner  in  the  whole  world. 
"God  be  merciful  to  me,  the  sinner." 

That  is  a  model  prayer.  It  is  earnest  desire,  simply 
and  directly  expressed.  There  is  no  mistaking  this 
man's  sincerity,  no  doubting  his  earnestness.  Clearly  he 
is  moved  by  a  deep  sense  of  need.  He  has  come  to  the 
temple  with  a  heavy  burden  of  unforgiven  sin  resting 
upon  his  soul.  He  wishes  to  be  rid  of  it,  and  he  asks 
for  freedom.    A  model  prayer,  I  say. 

Yes,  we  all  of  us  recognize  it  as  such,  but  we  rarely 
imitate  it.     It  is  very  difficult  for  us,  however  conscious 

339 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

of  sin,  to  keep  our  eyes  off  that  Pharisee — either  the 
Pharisee  of  the  parable  or  that  other  flesh  and  blood 
Pharisee  whom  we  know  more  intimately.  We  may 
realize  that  we  are  sinners,  but  we  can  readily  point  out 
plenty  of  self-satisfied  hypocrites  who,  we  feel  sure,  are 
not  so  much  better  than  we  are,  as  they  themselves  fancy. 
We  may  not  always  lift  our  eyes  to  heaven,  but  we 
generally  lift  them  high  enough  to  look  at  our  neigh- 
bors. 

Now  we  have  not  caught  the  publican's  spirit  of  pray- 
er till  we  have  not  only  become  conscious  of  our  own 
sinfulness  but  have  become  so  profoundly  sensible  of 
it  that  we  wholly  forget  to  compare  ourselves  with  oth- 
ers; yes,  that  we  become  utterly  unconscious  of  the 
Pharisees  and  hypocrites  in  our  neighborhood. 

True  worship  isolates  self  before  God  in  its  closest 
communion.  Each  true  penitent  becomes  for  the  time 
at  least  "the  sinner,"  alone  unexcused,  supremely  guilty. 
No  absurdity  of  exaggerated  self-accusation  is  there;  no 
overstrained  or  morbid  abasement  that  lowers  the  child 
of  God  to  the  level  of  brute  or  worm.  Just  a  simple, 
straightforward  confession  of  the  truth — the  going 
apart  of  the  soul  in  the  presence  of  God  to  be  seen  in  its 
true  light,  and  seeking  no  advantage  or  excuse  from 
comparison  with  others. 

Now  observe  the  third  contrast  in  the  picture,  the 
contrast  of  results.  "This  man,"  says  our  Lord  of  the 
publican,  "went  down  to  his  house  justified  rather  than 
the  other."  "Justified,"  what  does  that  mean?  Are  we 
to  understand  that  Jesus  declares  the  publican  a  better 
man  than  the  Pharisee  ?  No ;  for,  as  we  have  seen,  he 
was  a  worse  man.  It  is  not  the  counterbalancing  of  bad 
morals  and  a  sinful  life  by  a  single  religious  act  that 
is  pleasing  to  God.  Justification  and  condemnation  are 
not  so  much  declarations  of  God  as  they  are  actual  ex- 
periences of  man.     In  the  case  before  us  at  least  the 

340 


THE    PHARISEE   AND  THE    PUBLICAN 

term  refers  chiefly  to  the  state  of  mind  in  which  the  two 
men  went  forth  from  their  temple  worship. 

The  Pharisee  has  come  to  the  temple  with  no  specific 
purpose  beyond  the  fulfilment  of  a  certain  religious  cus- 
tom or  duty.  It  is  the  hour  of  prayer,  therefore  le 
goes  through  the  form  of  prayer  even  though  he  feels 
no  need  of  it.  He  does  it  because  all  respectable  people 
do  it,  and  he  believes  that  for  some  reason  it  is  pleasing 
to  God.  He  wants  nothing,  at  least  he  is  not  conscious 
of  any  want;  he  asks  for  nothing,  and  he  receives  noth- 
ing. Yet  we  can  be  morally  certain  that  as  he  goes  on 
his  homeward  way  a  feeling  of  disappointment  and  self- 
disgust  fills  his  heart. 

There  is  a  strange  inconsistency  in  most  natures  that 
leads  them  vaguely  to  expect  some  blessing  in  worship 
even  when  they  do  not  ask  for  it  and  do  not  feel  any  defi- 
nite need.  There  is  a  certain  looking  for  the  un- 
sought and  the  unexpected  in  the  realm  of  religion,  and 
a  sense  of  perpetual  disappointment  when  nothing  comes. 
Furthermore,  as  overindulgence  in  sweets  cloys  the 
stomach  and  produces  a  feeling  of  discomfort  and  nau- 
sea, so  the  contemplation  of  one's  own  virtues  and  the 
enumeration  of  one's  excellent  qualities  is  sure  to  result 
in  that  mental  revulsion  which  we  know  as  self-con- 
demnation. Who  can  doubt  that  this  was  the  state  of 
mind  in  which  the  Pharisee  returned  to  his  house  after 
his  temple  boasting?  He  may  have  been  pure  in  life 
and  honest  in  dealings,  scrupulous  in  tithing  and  faithful 
in  worship,  but  I'll  warrant  he  was  surly  to  his  wife 
and  cross  to  the  children  that  day.  His  superior  mo- 
rality and  careful  piety  did  not  bring  a  smile  to  his  face 
and  music  to  his  voice. 

Do  not  we  also  often  share  his  experience  ?  We  come 
to  the  house  of  God  for  worship,  but  often  we  come 
with  little  or  no  purpose  beyond  going  through  the 
prescribed  and  conventional  forms.  We  sing  and  we 
pray  and  we  enter  into  the  service,  not  because  we  expect 

341 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

any  definite  results,  nor  yet  because  we  have  any  clearly 
defined  sense  of  personal  need,  but  simply  because  others 
are  doing  these  things,  or  because  we  have  formed  the 
habit  of  doing  them  and  consider  the  habit  eminently 
proper  and  respectable.  Nevertheless  when  we  go  away 
to  our  homes  at  the  close  of  the  service  we  are  in  a  very 
critical  and  faultfinding  mood.  We  are  disappointed. 
The  sermon  was  poor,  the  singing  was  worse,  and  as 
for  the  prayers  and  all  the  rest  there  was  nothing  help- 
ful in  any  part  of  it.  We  lament  the  degeneracy  of  mod- 
ern preaching,  the  decadence  of  spiritual  worship,  the 
poverty  of  the  Church  services  of  our  time.  True,  we  had 
no  purpose  in  coming  to  the  sanctuary,  no  sense  of  need. 
We  did  not  want  anything  in  particular,  yet  in  a  sort  of 
indefinite  way  we  expected  to  be  blessed,  and  we  were  not. 
What  is  the  matter?  It  is  the  sense  of  self-condemna- 
tion. We  have  been  contemplating  our  own  goodness, 
if  not  directly  and  boastfully  at  least  in  a  roundabout 
manner,  by  way  of  the  failing  of  others,  or  we  have  been 
indulging  our  appetite  for  merely  formal  v/orship,  till 
our  souls  have  become  somewhat  sickened. 

Of  course  you  say  that  the  Pharisee  could  not  reason- 
ably expect  any  blessing  from  his  worship  when  he  waSi 
not  conscious  of  any  need,  and  did  not  ask  for  anything.  \ 
But  I  appeal  to  your  own  experience  whether  the  same 
sense  of  disappointment  and  condemnation  has  not  come 
to  you  many  times  from  the  same  cause.  Have  you  not 
often  come  to  God's  house  to  worship  without  an)^ 
definite  purpose  and  gone  away  disappointed  because 
God  did  not  bestow  some  blessing  unexpected  and  un- 
asked? If  not,  I  venture  the  assertion  that  your  ex- 
perience is  unique. 

The  publican  goes  to  his  house  justified,  i.  e.,  with 
a  great  load  lifted  from  his  mind  and  heart.  Not  that 
he  is  now  a  better  man  than  the  Pharisee.  Probably  it 
was  many  years  before  he  rose  to  such  a  level  of  moral- 

343 


THE    PHARISEE   AND  THE    PUBLICAN 

ity  and  refinement  and  piety  as  the  Pharisee  had  lived 
upon  from  birth.  The  habits  of  mind  and  action  that 
have  been  forming  for  years  are  not  changed  in  a  mo- 
ment. This  publican  had  been  hard,  grasping,  dishonest, 
rude,  and  much  time  would  be  required  to  overcome 
these  evil  tendencies.  But  he  has  made  a  frank  and  full 
confession.  He  has  appealed  to  God  for  mercy  and 
help,  and  there  steals  into  his  soul  the  sense  of  peace  and 
pardon  which  is  the  first  condition  of  a  new  life.  He 
feels  better  already  because  he  has  determined  to  do 
better. 

I  should  like  to  follow  him  to  his  home,  to  note  the 
tender  way  in  which  he  speaks  to  the  wife  and  the 
gentle  manner  with  the  little  ones.  Even  before  he  tells 
them  of  his  new  resolves  and  higher  purposes  they  are 
aware  of  the  change  that  has  come  over  him.  His  en- 
trance is  like  the  coming  of  the  sunlight  into  the  house, 
and  the  entire  family  feels  the  contagion  of  his  new- 
found joy. 

The  Pharisee  had  exalted  himself  in  his  boasting  pray- 
er over  his  fellows,  and  he  goes  forth  humbled,  down- 
cast in  mind,  vexed  in  spirit.  More  than  this,  it  is  a 
step  in  the  downward  movement  of  his  whole  life.  Per- 
haps the  change  was  too  slight  to  attract  attention,  but  it 
was  the  beginning  of,  or  a  progressive  step  in,  a  revolu- 
tion in  him  that  would  some  time  bring  him  to  a  plane 
lower  than  that  of  the  despised  publican.  Self-satisfac- 
tion always  marks  the  beginning  of  moral  and  spiritual 
decline.  And  that  temple  service  was  the  planting  of  a 
seed  whose  growth  would  surely  choke  out  every  one  of 
the  noble  qualities  and  actions  recounted  with  so  much 
complacence,  unless  itself  were  uprooted  by  repentance 
and  self-abasement. 

The  publican,  on  the  other  hand,  humbled  himself  by 
a  confession  and  a  plea  that  must  have  been  doubly 
significant  when  offered  within  ear-shot  of  the  Pharisee's 

343 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

insults.  But  he  is  too  much  in  earnest  even  to  hear  those, 
let  alone  paying  any  attention  to  them.  And  he  goes 
forth  exalted — exalted  in  mind,  and  with  the  first  po- 
tent impulse  towards  an  exaltation  of  life  which  shall 
bring  him  daily  nearer  to  God  and  heaven. 

A  similar  prayer  has  been  the  turning-point  in  many 
a  life.  Uttered  by  the  despairing  soul  in  the  depths  of 
misery  and  degradation  it  has  furnished  the  power  and 
the  courage  to  rise  once  more  to  the  level  of  purity  and 
hope.  Uttered  by  a  soul  seeking  to  escape  from  the 
fetters  of  pride  and  false  respectability,  it  has  melted 
the  frozen  heart  and  has  transformed  the  icy  crystals 
of  a  dead  religion  into  refreshing  fountains  of  spiritual 
life  and  power. 

I  have  said  that  while  prayer  is  the  particular  subject 
of  this  picture,  its  lesson  is  not  designed  to  apply  solely 
to  prayer.  In  fact,  it  is  not  restricted  to  any  part  of  the 
religious  life,  but  stands  as  a  type  of  spiritual  life  as 
a  whole.  The  truth  is  general— "He  that  exalteth  him- 
self shall  be  humbled ;  and  he  that  humbleth  himself  shall 
be  exalted." 

Some  one  has  said,  "No  man  can  enter  the  kingdom  oi 
heaven  with  his  head  erect."  The  gate  of  heaven  is 
low,  and  he  who  would  enter  must  stoop;  but  when  he 
has  entered  the  lowly  gate  he  shall  find  unspeakable 
glories  on  the  other  side. 

The  doctrines  of  repentance,  confession,  conviction 
of  sin  and  the  like  are  going  out  of  fashion  in  these 
days.  We  think  that  we  can  grow  into  the  spiritual 
life  by  a  process  so  gradual  that  it  shall  not  be  perceived. 
There  is  no  need,  we  fancy,  to  humble  ourselves.  We 
will  simply  conform  our  lives  more  and  more  to  the 
accepted  Christian  standards,  and  by  and  by,  almost  be- 
fore we  know  it,  we  shall  wake  up  to  find  ourselves 
full-fledged  Christian  saints.     Evolution  is  the  popular 

.344 


THE    PHARISEE  AND  THE    PUBLICAN 

catchword  of  the  age.  The  phrase  is  interpreted  as  em- 
bodying a  force  or  a  process  that  works  gradually  and 
quite  imperceptibly  and  yet  brings  about  infinite  results, 
and  in  the  course  of  time  transforms  all  manner  of  evil 
into  highest  good. 

Multitudes  to-day  are  trying  to  become  Christians  by 
this  method.  They  are  not  conscious  of  any  particular 
need  in  their  lives.  They  feel  sure  that  they  are  as  good 
already  as  the  great  mass  of  Christians.  They  are  a 
great  deal  better  than  some  whom  they  see  every  Sab- 
bath in  the  sanctuary.  Their  lives  are  clean  and  pure 
and  exceedingly  respectable.  So  they  go  regularly  to 
church.  They  give  more  or  less  liberally  to  its  support. 
They  take  a  certain  part  in  its  activities  and  patronize 
it  in  every  way.  And  they  expect  by  this  means,  with- 
out any  humiliating  confessions  of  sin  or  need,  gradually 
to  obtain  recognition  as  Christians  and  so  to  enter  heaven 
at  last. 

But  the  spiritual  life  does  not  come  to  them.  They 
are  subject  to  continual  disappointment.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  gradual  spiritualization.  No  one  can  be- 
come a  Christian  without  repentance  and  conversion. 
No  one  can  attain  the  lofty  experiences  and  joys  of 
sainthood  without  humbling  himself. 

True,  there  is  a  false  and  foolish  abasement  of  self 
that  injures  the  soul  instead  of  uplifting  it.  To  grovel 
is  one  thing,  to  humble  oneself  is  quite  another.  The 
one  is  false  and  artificial,  the  other  natural  and  neces- 
sary. The  soul  must  be  humbled  before  God  or  the 
spiritual  life  will  not  flow  in  with  its  fruits  of  peace  and 
joy  and  glory. 

But  he  who,  forgetting  his  own  dignity  and  pride, 
comes  to  God  with  a  free  and  full  acknowledgment  of 
sin  and  need,  he  who  feels  with  the  publican  that  he  is 
"the  sinner,"  and  humbles  himself  in  the  sinner's  place, 
will  never  fail  to  receive  tokens  of  God's  forgiving  love. 

345 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

To  him  the  spiritual  life  and  power  will  be  granted. 
He  shall  have  daily  victory  over  sin.  He  shall  enter  into 
a  daily  more  exalted  fellowship  with  Jesus  Christ.  As 
his  humility  is  continuous,  continuous  also  shall  be  his 
exaltation.  Not  only  shall  he  be  justified,  but  he  shall 
also  be  sanctified  and  glorified. 


346 


The  Wise  Use 
of  Wealth 


CHAPTER   XXVII 

The  Wise  Use 
of  Wealth 

THE   UNRIGHTEOUS    STEWARD 

Luke  16:1-12 

Text. — **Maie  to  youriel'ves  friends  by  means  of  the  mammon  of 

unrighteousness. ' ' — Luke  16 :9 

TO  discover  truth  in  things  false,  to  bring 
good  out  of  things  evil,  to  make  darkness 
radiant  with  light,  is  characteristic  of  the 
Christ.  He  seizes  the  most  untoward  inci- 
dent, and  wrings  from  it  a  message  of 
divine  truth.  He  takes  the  vilest  sinner  and  transforms 
him  into  a  preacher  of  righteousness.  He  finds  the 
leaven  a  universal  symbol  of  corruption,  transfigures 
it  by  a  touch,  and  it  becomes  forever  after  a  type  of 
heavenly  character.  He  lays  hold  of  the  serpent,  hither- 
to the  representative  of  Satan  and  the  satanic,  and  im- 
presses him  into  his  service  as  an  object-lesson  of  heav- 
enly wisdom;  he  even  makes  him  a  yokefellow  of  the 
gentle  dove  in  the  eternal  symbolism  of  the  spiritual 
life.  He  takes  the  corrupt  politician  and  the  unscrupu- 
lous tradesman  and,  clothing  them  in  the  garb  of  par- 
able, sends  them  forth  as  teachers  of  highest  truth  to 
the  world. 

In  the  opening  verses  of  the  sixteenth  of  Luke  we 
have  a  case  in  point.  It  is  the  story  of  a  criminal  and 
his  crime,  used  to  impress  a  profound  moral  lesson. 
It  is  a  picture  of  evil  from  which  _  the  Master 
derives  suggestions  of  good  for  his  disciples.  Let  us 
study  the  incident  in  the  light  of  his  criticism. 

349 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

The  central  figure  of  the  picture  is  a  steward,  a  neg- 
ligent and  wasteful  steward.  At  the  moment  of  his  in- 
troduction he  has  been  accused  of  unfaithfulness,  and 
his  employer  has  brought  him  to  account.  As  always, 
the  crisis  reveals  character.  Hitherto  he  has  been 
merely  careless ;  now  he  becomes  positively  criminal. 
Instead  of  confessing  his  negligence  and  seeking  for- 
giveness, with  the  opportunity  to  correct  the  evils  of  his 
administration,  or  in  some  way  to  make  good  the  losses 
incurred,  he  adds  knavery  to  neglect  and  fraud  to  faith- 
lessness in  order  that  he  may  escape  the  just  retribution 
of  his  wrong-doing. 

The  man's  action  admits  of  no  justification.  He  is 
the  impersonation  of  utter  dishonesty.  His  conduct  il- 
lustrates the  natural  and  rapid  progress  of  evil  in  his 
quick  stride  from  waste  to  wantonness.  The  accusation 
made  against  him  at  the  outset  does  not  of  necessity 
imply  moral  wrong.  His  wastefulness  might  have  been 
the  result  of  incapacity.  That  there  was  real  indolence 
and  indiflference  appears  only  as  we  read  the  sequel. 
Only  culpable  negligence  could  have  ripened  so  sud- 
denly into  fraudulent  conspiracy. 

Accused  of  wastefulness  and  threatened  with  dis- 
charge, he  provides  against  future  want  by  a  system  of 
"graft"  that  has  never  been  surpassed  by  the  most  astute 
and  corrupt  of  modern  politicians.  .  His  lord's  income  is 
derived  from  tenants  who  pay  as  rental  an  annual  per- 
centage of  their  harvests.  The  amount  to  be  paid  de- 
pends therefore  in  a  large  measure  upon  their  own 
statements.  Each  makes  out  his  "bill,"  which  he  gives 
to  the  steward,  and  payment  is  made  upon  that  basis. 
Probably  none  but  these  two,  the  tenant  and  the  stew- 
ard,, would  know  enough  about  the  actual  items  involved 
intelligently  to  question  the  correctness  of  the  bill. 

In  the  brief  time  that  remains  for  closing  up  his  ac- 
counts, the  steward  of  our  parable  visits  such  of  his 
lord's  debtors  as  he  thinks  may  be  tampered  with.    Of 

350 


THE     UNRIGHTEOUS     STEWARD 

each  he  asks  the  question,  "How  much  owest  thou  unto 
my  lord?"  and,  on  receiving  answer,  bids  him  make  out 
his  bill  for  a  smaller  amount.  To  one  he  offers  a  bribe 
of  fifty  per  cent,  to  another  of  twenty,  to  each  doubtless 
the  largest  sum  that  he  thought  the  man's  conscience  or 
fear  of  detection  would  allow  him  to  accept.  By  this 
means  he  wins  the  favor  of  many  of  his  lord's  debtors 
and  at  the  same  time  so  involves  them  in  his  own  crim- 
inal action  that  they  will  not  fail  to  care  for  him  when 
his  stewardship  is  taken  away. 

The  nature  of  the  scheme  gave  reasonable  assurance 
of  its  secrecy,  since  the  knowledge  of  it  implied  com- 
plicity in  the  fraud.  Yet  by  some  means  the  story  leaks 
out  and  comes  to  the  ears  of  the  employer,  and  he  can- 
not refrain  from  expressing  his  admiration.  In  spite 
of  his  own  loss  he  commends  the  steward  "because  he 
had  done  wisely."  Himself  doubtiess  an  unscrupulou? 
man  and  dishonest  in  his  dealings,  he  admires  the  su- 
perior knavery  of  an  underling  who  could  thus  outwit 
him  in  the  very  hour  of  discovery  and  discharge,  and 
could  secure  his  own  permanent  comfort  at  the  expense 
of  a  master  whom  he  had  already  wronged.  The  very 
coolness  and  impudence  of  the  man  appealed  to  him. 
His  promptness,  energy  and  foresight  were  extraordi- 
nary. This  wealthy  landowner  had  been  wont  to  look 
down  upon  the  steward  as  his  servant  in  social  rela- 
tions. He  now  discovers  that  he  must  look  up  to  him 
as  a  master  in  high  finance. 

I  do  not  feel  sure  that  the  steward  was  discharged 
after  all.  On  the  contrary,  I  can  easily  imagine  this 
somewhat  easy-going  employer  retaining  him  and  enter- 
ing into  a  partnership  of  rascality  with  him,  hoping  to 
profit  by  his  masterly  shrewdness.  I  can  also  imagine 
that  in  the  course  of  years  the  relation  of  the  two  was 
reversed  and  that  the  steward  became  owner  of  vast 
estates  and  the  former  master  became  steward  or  under- 
ling.  ^'-'^^'^-- 

351 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

(Be  that  as  it  may,  remember  that  it  is  his  lord  that 
commends  him,  not  our  Lord.  No,,  not  a  word  of  com- 
mendation has  Jesus  for  the  rascally  steward.  He  paints 
him  as  a  rascal  and  only  a  rascal.  Nevertheless,  he  finds 
in  the  incident  lessons  that  are  not  without  value  for  his 
own  disciples.  Though  not  sympathizing  with  it  he 
appreciates  the  admiration  of  this  injured  employer  for 
his  knavish  servant.  "For,"  says  he,  "the  sons  of  this 
world  are  for  their  own  generation  wiser  than  the  sons 
of  the  light." 

One  is  tempted  to  pause  here  and  to  make  this  utter- 
ance the  final  lesson  of  the  parable.  It  certainly  sug- 
gests a  most  practical  interpretation  of  the  story.  Chris- 
tian men  of  to-day  may  well  sit  at  the  feet  of  their 
worldly  neighbors,  yes,  even  of  the  dishonest  and  un- 
scrupulous, and  learn  from  them  many  valuable  lessons 
of  thrift  and  energy  and  prudence.  We  Christians  talk 
about  the  corruption  of  politics,  the  sordidness  of  com- 
merce, the  follies  of  society,  but  each  of  these  phases 
of  our  worldly  life  is  pregnant  with  suggestion  for  the 
betterment  of  Christian  work. 

No  doubt  modern  politics  are  corrupt;  yet  modern  re- 
ligion may  learn  many  a  lesson  of  priceless  value  from 
politics.  "How  can  I  get  the  boys  and  girls  to  come  to 
Sunday-school?"  was  the  question  asked  by  a  young 
superintendent  at  a  Sunday-school  convention.  "Count 
every  Sunday  an  important  election  day,  the  schoolroom 
a  polling  place,  and  every  youth  a  voter,"  was  the  quick 
response  of  the  leader  who  chanced  to  be  a  ward  poli- 
tician. True  enough !  Let  a  tithe  of  the  interest  be 
manifested  and  of  the  effort  be  put  forth  by  parents 
and  Christian  workers  to  bring  our  children  to  the  Sun- 
day-school that  is  made  by  politicians  to  bring  voters  to 
the  polls,  and  every  Sabbath-school  would  speedily  be 
filled  to  overflowing. 

Granted  that  modern  commerce  is  sordid  and  selfish : 

352 


THE    UNRIGHTEOUS    STEWARD 

yet  commerce  may  serve  at  some  points  as  the  teacher 
of  rehgion.  The  twentieth  century  merchant  keeps  up 
with  the  times.  The  twentieth  century  church  is  often 
very  far  behind  the  times.  The  merchant  is  perpetually 
on  the  lookout  for  attractive  novelties.  Many  a  church 
never  offers  either  novelty  or  attraction.  Until  it  is  as 
easy  to  secure  a  quorum  of  church  officers  as  of  bank 
directors,  until  Christians  will  work  as  hard  to  save  a 
soul  as  the  business  man  works  to  save  a  dollar,  until 
the  disciples  of  Jesus  display  just  as  much  energy  and 
promptness  and  persistence  in  the  business  of  the  king- 
dom as  they  display  in  the  conduct  of  their  secular  af- 
fairs, religion  must  sit  at  the  feet  of  commerce  and  listen 
to  her  instruction. 

And  even  society  gay,  frivolous,  selfish  society — 
can  teach  Christians  something.  See  how  freely  these 
votaries  of  pleasure  spend  their  money  for  amusement, 
how  they  wear  out  their  lives  in  pursuit  of  a  "good 
time,"  how  they  toil  and  strive  and  sacrifice  for  trifles. 
Were  the  disciples  of  Jesus  one-half  as  free  in  spending 
time  and  money  and  strength  in  his  service,  we  should 
live  in  a  perpetual  revival. 

When  I  see  a  great  cause  like  that  of  temperance  hard 
bestead  because  the  forces  that  make  for  sobriety  are 
divided  over  a  thousand  and  one  minor  points  while 
their  opponents  sink  all  secondary  matters  in  the  one 
great  issue,  or  when  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  is  split 
up  into  numberless  sects  and  parties  by  insignificant 
differences  of  creed  and  form  while  the  hosts  of  evil 
march  in  solid  columns  to  victory,  I  realize  the  eternal 
truth  of  the  Master's  words,  "The  sons  of  this  world 
are  for  their  own  generation  wiser  than  the  sons  of 
the  light." 

Striking  as  these  words  are,  however,  they  were  not 
designed  by  our  Lord  to  embody  the  central  lesson  of 
the  parable.    On  the  contrary,  they  are  merely  incidental, 

353 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

a  side-light  upon  the  central  truth,  a  comment  upon  the 
employer's  admiration,  and  a  connecting  link  between  the 
action  of  the  parable  and  the  lesson  it  was  intended  to 
convey. 

Plainly  the  emphasis  of  the  whole  rests  upon  those 
words,  "I  say  unto  you,  Make  to  yourselves  friends  by 
means  of  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness;  that,  when 
it  shall  fail,  they  may  receive  you  into  the  eternal 
tabernacles." 

Taking  this  for  our  center  we  may  easily  trace  out  the 
circle  of  truth  which  the  Great  Teacher  has  described 
for  us.  As  we  go  over  the  ground  carefully,  we  shall 
find  but  one  topic  presented  to  us,,  viz.,  The  wise  use  of 
wealth. 

It  is  not  without  significance  that  the  central  figure 
of  our  parable  is  a  steward.  Two  apostles  have  adopted 
the  phrase  in  their  letters  and  have  made  it  symbolic  of 
Christian  service.  We  are  stezvards  of  God.  No  man 
has  seen  life  as  he  ought  to  see  it,  no  man  has  the  proper 
perspective  of  existence,  until  he  realizes  that  every 
blessing  he  enjoys,  whether  material  or  spiritual,  his 
wealth,  his  talents,  his  time,  his  influence,  his  power, 
everything  is  God's,  not  given  to  him  for  his  exclusive 
use  and  enjoyment,  but  committed  to  him  that  he  may 
administer  it  for  the  common  good  and  render  account 
of  it  at  last  to  the  owner. 

Men,  even  Christian  men,  are  given  to  talking  about 
their  possessions  as  though  they  were  the  owners.  They 
assume  proprietary  rights  in  the  gifts  of  God.  And 
when  they  use  even  a  small  fraction  of  that  which  God 
has  entrusted  to  them  for  the  advancement  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  when  they  help  some  needy  brother  or 
contribute  to  some  missionary  enterprise,  they  call  it  a 
"gift."  We  can  never  discover  the  true  relations  of  life, 
the  true  measure  of  duty,  the  true  standard  of  righteous- 
ness, till  we  change  our  view-point.     We  must  put  away 

354 


THE     UNRIGHTEOUS    STEWARD 

this  false  notion  of  ownership  and  accept  instead  thereof 
the  idea  of  stewardship.  My  money  is  not  mine  but 
God's.  Your  wits  are  not  yours  but  God's.  AUke  the 
wealth  of  the  millionaire,  the  skill  of  the  artisan,  the 
genius  of  the  artist,  the  learning  of  the  scholar,  the 
beauty  of  the  social  queen,  are  gifts  conferred  by  the 
Almighty  to  be  administered  faithfully,  wisely,  carefully 
for  him  in  the  redemption  of  the  world. 

The  purpose  of  our  stewardship  is  twofold — the 
glory  of  God  and  the  blessing  of  man.  Seen  in  the 
clearest  light  the  two  are  identical,  since  the  highest 
happiness  and  perfection  of  man  is  the  only  glory  of 
God.  He  has  no  glory  apart  from  that.  We  speak  of 
using  our  gifts  for  God;  but  we  can  use  them  for  him 
only  as  we  use  them  for  our  fellow  men.  Any  offering  to 
God  that  does  not  bless  man  is  an  expression  of  error  and 
superstition.  True  religion  is  always  philanthropic, 
redemptive. 

We  are  stewards  of  God,  and  the  realm  of  our  stew- 
ardship is  all-comprehensive.  It  includes  our  material 
possessions,  our  personal  qualities,  our  intellectual  gifts, 
our  moral  characteristics,  and  also  our  spiritual  experi- 
ences and  attainments.  All  these  are  parts  of  our  wealth. 
All  are  given  us  to  be  used  for  God  in  the  service  of 
man.  In  the  story  before  us,  however,  material  gifts 
only  are  mentioned  as  typical  of  all.  The  material  ele- 
ment of  life  being  lowest  and  least  spiritual,  if  that  be 
surrendered  and  brought  into  true  alignment  with  the 
spirit  of  Christ,  the  rest  will  follow  almost  as  a  matter 
of  course. 

"The  mammon  of  unrighteousness,"  our  Lord  calls  it. 
In  that  phrase  we  find  an  ancient  equivalent  for  the 
modern  phrase,  "Tainted  money."  Jesus  clearly  recog- 
nized the  tendency  of  material  wealth  to  produce  sel- 
fishness and  to  lead  to  overt  sin.  "How  hardly  shall 
they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven  I" 
is  his  own  exclamation,  and  he  compares  the  rich  man 

355 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

at  heaven's  gate  to  the  camel  trying  to  pass  through  a 
needle's  eye. 

From  the  beginning,  wealth  of  all  kinds  has  been  the 
instrument  of  unrighteousness.  Probably  every  dollar 
that  has  ever  been  issued  has  been  tainted  at  some  point 
in  its  circulation.  Nevertheless,  wealth  is  not  evil  in 
itself,  nor  is  it  a  proof  of  evil  in  its  possessor.  Jesus 
plainly  declares  that  it  is  possible  to  make  a  wise  and 
righteous  use  of  material  wealth.  His  contrast  between 
the  "unrighteous  mammon"  and  the  "true  riches"  is  a 
contrast  of  relations  rather  than  of  things,,  or  it  is  a 
contrast  between  the  material  and  the  spiritual,  between 
the  temporal  and  the  eternal. 

Material  things  have  no  inherent  moral  character. 
The  taint  of  unrighteousness  does  not  abide  in  them 
continuously.  I  The  money  that  has  been  tainted  by 
wrong  uses  is  cleansed  again  by  right  uses.  Moral 
character  reveals  itself  only  in  the  spiritual  relations  of 
material  things,  the  motives  that  inspire  their  acquisi- 
tion and  use,  the  ends  to  which  they  are  applied. 

Again,  material  things,  however  helpful  and  gratify- 
ing for  a  time,  will  soon  pass  away.  Spiritual  things 
are  everlasting.  We  may  so  use  the  material  blessings 
which  God  has  entrusted  to  us  that  they  become  the 
great  end  of  our  existence  and  effort,  and  when  they 
are  gone  we  have  nothing  left;  or  we  may  make  them 
a  stepping-stone  and  passport  to  something  higher, 
something  that  is  permanent,  and  when  at  last  they  slip 
from  our  grasp  we  shall  have  instead  that  which  is  un- 
speakably more  delightful  and  satisfying.  So  em- 
ployed, material  riches  are  like  the  seed  which  we  cast 
into  the  earth,  and  when  it  gradually  decays  and  dis- 
appears we  have  instead  the  growing  plant  with  its  foli- 
age, its  blossoms  and  its  fruit  reappearing  perhaps 
through  many  years,  or  they  are  like  the  precious  oint- 
ment that,  as  it  evaporates,  fills  all  surrounding  space 
with  its  rich  perfume. 

356 


THE     UNRIGHTEOUS    STEWARD 

Take  the  most  direct  and  literal  suggestion  of  our 
Lord's  words.  A  disciple  may  have  worldly  wealth,  he 
may  be  prosperous  in  business  or  may  have  received  a 
goodly  inheritance.  What  shall  he  do  with  it?  Two 
courses  are  open  to  him.  On  the  one  hand,  he  may 
suffer  himself  to  become  wholly  absorbed  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  these  things.  He  may  call  them  his  own,  using 
them  in  a  selfish  or  indifferent  manner,  and  they  may 
bring  him  only  the  passing  pleasure  that  shall  cease  with 
the  loss  of  the  gifts  themselves.  Or,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  may  recognize  the  great  facts  of  stewardship  and 
duty.  He  may  administer  the  trust  in  such  manner  that 
he  shall  endear  himself  to  all  around  by  his  beneficence 
and  kindness.  At  length  comes  loss.  By  some  mis- 
fortune his  riches  disappear  and  he  is  left  in  poverty. 
Then  the  friends  made  in  his  prosperous  days,  made  by 
means  of  his  wealth,  rally  around  him  and  save  him  from 
want.  Or,  to  carry  the  thought  still  further,  he  dies. 
Then  we  may  believe  that  as  he  enters  the  other  world 
he  will  not  find  himself  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land, 
for  there  will  be  many  whom  he  has  befriended  who  will 
await  him  and  welcome  him  to  that  realm  of  bliss.  That 
is  no  mere  fancy  but  a  blessed  reality  that  leads  the 
Christly  soul  to  look  forward  to  the  reception  into  the 
next  life  by  those  whom  he  has  helped  in  this  world, 
even  though  it  be  in  a  purely  material  sense.  Friends 
made  by  means  of  the  mammon  of  unrighteousness  shall 
receive  us  into  the  everlasting  habitations.  Thus  the 
material  and  temporal  good  shall  be  transmuted  into 
spiritual  and  eternal  blessing. 

There  is  a  close  and  vital  connection  between  this 
parable  of  The  Unfaithful  Steward  and  the  parable  of 
Dives  and  Lazarus  which  immediately  follows  it  in 
Luke's  narrative.  They  present  two  sides  of  one  sub- 
ject. The  steward  of  the  one  and  the  rich  man  of  the 
other  are  companion  pictures  hung  side  by  side  for  the 

357 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

sake  of  contrast.     One  represents  the  wise,  the  other 

the  unwise  use  of  wealth. 

In  the  parable  before  us  the  steward,  though  dishonest 
and  unworthy,  makes  such  a  use  of  the  wealth  entrusted 
to  him  as  to  secure  for  himself  a  future  welcome  into 
the  homes  of  his  lord's  debtors  when  he  shall  be  thrust 
out  of  the  stewardship.  Upon  the  basis  of  this  limited 
foresight  for  future  needs,  Jesus  founds  an  exhortation 
to  like  wisdom  for  the  eternal  future  in  the  use  of 
opportunity.  If  this  rascal  is  wise  enough  to  so  use 
his  lord's  wealth  that  he  shall  ensure  the  future  when 
the  trust  is  taken  from  him,  why  should  not  the  disciple 
so  use  his  divine  trust  that  he  shall  be  assured  of  a  wel- 
come when  the  material  is  for  him  no  more? 

In  the  following  parable,  Lazarus  is  welcomed  into 
the  abode  of  bliss,  for  he  had  clearly  made  friends  with 
very  little  in  this  world,  while  Dives  with  all  his  riches 
had  made  no  friends  and  entered  the  other  world  without 
a  welcome.  The  contrast  between  the  two  pictures  is 
marked,  and  while  we  may  not  press  it  too  closely,  it 
is  certainly  pregnant  with  a  significant  lesson. 

The  wisdom  of  the  worldly  man  is  for  his  own  gen- 
eration; the  wisdom  of  the  godly  man  is  for  eternity. 
The  range  of  the  one  is  limited ;  that  of  the  other  is 
infinite.  Yet  the  godly  man  may  learn  many  a  lesson 
of  true  wisdom  from  his  godless  neighbor.  The  godless 
man  practises  thrift,  economy,  diligence,  and  the  like. 
in  order  to  satisfy  present  needs ;  for  he  says,  "One  must 
live."  The  godly  man  should  surpass  him  in  all  right 
effort,  for  he,  too,  rpalizes  the  fact  that  one  must  live — 
eternally.  The  godless  man  husbands  his  resources  that 
he  may  "lay  up  for  a  rainy  day" ;  the  godly  man  should 
so  husband  his  that  he  may  have  an  abundance  laid  up 
for  countless  ages.  The  godless  man  provides  against 
the  probable ;  should  not  the  godly  man  provide  with 
equal  care  and  wisdom  for  the  certain?  Even  the  un- 
godly man  is  often  faithful  in  the  discharge  of  a  small 

358 


THE     UNRIGHTEOUS    STEWARD 

trust  in  order  that  it  may  become  a  stepping-stone  to 
larger  opportunity ;  but  he  who,,  in  the  fear  of  God, 
faithfully  administers  the  stewardship  of  this  present 
time,  shall  find  that  earth  itself  is  a  stepping-stone  to 
heaven  and  that  the  stewardship  of  time  shall  prepare 
him  for  the  ownership  of  eternity. 


359 


An  Impassable 
Barrier 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

An  Impassable 
Barrier 

DIVES  AND   LAZARUS 

Luke  16:19-31 

Text. — '^Betiveen  us  and  you  there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed."'' — Luke  16:26 

IN  the  world  of  nature  two  forces  are  seen  every- 
where at  work.  We  call  them  Attraction  and 
Repulsion.  They  are  opposite  in  direction  and 
in  effect.  The  former  is  always  conservative, 
the  latter  destructive.  Perhaps  the  simplest  and 
most  familiar  illustration  of  their  working  is  seen  in  the 
revolving  wheel.  The  motion  about  the  central  shaft 
generates  what  is  known  as  centrifugal  force,  that  is, 
a  repulsive  force  which  tends  to  drive  the  particles  of 
the  wheel  away  from  the  center  and  from  one  another. 
The  wheel  would  fly  into  countless  fragments  were  it  not 
for  the  operation  of  another  and  opposite  force,  known 
as  centripetal,  by  which  the  particles  composing  the  wheel 
are  held  fast  together.  If  at  any  time  the  centrifugal 
force  exceeds  the  centripetal,  the  wheel  flies  into  frag- 
ments and  is  destroyed. 

Now  these  two  forces  of  nature  are  but  types  of  two 
spiritual  forces  whose  working  we  may  observe  no  less 
readily.  These  are  the  forces  of  sin  and  holiness,  of 
selfishness  and  love;  the  former  repulsive,  the  latter  at- 
tractive; the  former  destructive,  the  latter  conservative. 
Everywhere  sin  operates  to  drive  men  apart  and  to  de- 
stroy them,  while  the  unfailing  influence  of  righteous- 

393 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

ness  and  love  is  to  attract  men  one  to  another  and  to  make 
for  their  permanent  safety  and  peace.  The  primitive 
story  of  the  Eden  Hfe  is  undoubtedly  true  to  nature, 
where  we  read  that  the  result  of  the  first  conscious  sin 
was  to  drive  the  guilty  pair  from  the  presence  of  God. 
And  the  force  that  separates  is  not  the  wrath  of  God, 
but  the  sin  of  man ;  for  we  find  man  hiding  himself  from 
the  presence  of  God  among  the  trees  of  the  garden  even 
before  he  realizes  that  his  Creator  knows  of  his  dis- 
obedience. And  ever  since,  when  the  power  of  sin  and 
selfishness  has  exceeded  the  forces  of  righteousness, 
there  have  been  division,  mistrust,  hostility,  strife  and  a 
continuous  effort  towards  destruction. 

As  sin  operated  to  drive  man  from  God,  so  it  contin- 
ually works  as  a  repelling  force  driving  men  apart  from 
one  another  and  keeping  them  apart.  To-day  we  find 
society  divided  into  classes  with  diverse  interests  and 
clashing  purposes.  On  the  great  industrial  and  economic 
questions  men  are  unable  to  get  together  and  to  view 
these  problems  from  a  common  standpoint.  Why  is  it? 
Because  the  repelling  force  of  sin  and  selfishness  holds 
them  apart. 

Jesus  gives  us  a  vivid  picture  of  the  operation  and 
ultimate  eflfect  of  this  repellent  or  divisive  force  in  the 
parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus. 

Here  are  two  men  who  represent  antipodal  conditions 
in  society.  First,  "there  was  a  certain  rich  man,  and  he 
was  clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen,  faring  sumptuously 
every  day."  Then,  "a  certain  beggar  named  Lazarus 
was  laid  at  his  gate,  full  of  sores,  and  desiring  to  be  fed 
with  the  crumbs  that  fell  from  the  rich  man's  table." 

It  is  a  picture  of  comfortable  wealth  over  against  the 
most  abject  poverty.  Nothing  is  said  directly  regarding 
the  character  of  the  two  men  thus  described.  We  may, 
however,  infer  certain  things.  Regarding  Lazarus,  we 
inevitably  conclude  that  his  poverty  is  not  the  result  of 
any  unthrift  or  wrong-doing  on  his  part,  but  of  absolute 

364 


DIVES         AND         LAZARUS 

inability  to  labor  because  of  disease.  In  fact,  the  whole 
tenor  of  the  story  leads  us  to  think  of  him  as  a  most 
worthy  man  who,  like  Job  of  old,  works  out  through  his 
privation  and  suffering  some  deep  design  of  Providence. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  in  the  phrase,  "yea,  even  the 
dogs  came  and  licked  his  sores,"  an  implied  suggestion 
that  the  rich  man  with  all  his  luxury  never  manifested 
the  slightest  compassion  for  poor  Lazarus.  There  is  no 
accusation  of  positive  wickedness,  no  hint  that  his  riches 
were  dishonestly  gained,  or  that  they  were  spent  in  any 
sinful  manner.  It  is  only  a  picture  of  utter  selfishness,  a 
suggestion  that  the  dogs  of  the  street  were  more  pitiful 
than  he.  Though  near  one  another  in  locality,  these  men 
were  being  driven  apart  daily  by  the  repellent  power  of 
the  spirit  of  selfishness  on  the  part  of  Dives. 

They  were  separated  in  their  lives,  and  they  were  also 
separated  in  their  deaths.  "The  beggar  died,"  says  the 
story,  "and  .  .  .  was  carried  away  by  the  angels  into 
Abraham's  bosom."  Of  the  other  we  read,  "The  rich 
man  also  died,  and  was  buried." 

Of  course  we  recognize  the  first  expression  as  figura- 
tive. It  is  merely  borrowed  from  the  familiar  Jewish 
conception  of  the  abode  of  the  blessed.  It  does  not  teach 
that  because  a  man  is  poor  or  suffers  in  this  life  he  will 
surely  find  a  compensating  happiness  in  the  next.  It 
does  teach,  however,  that  poverty  and  lowliness  in  this 
life  do  not  hinder  the  most  perfect  bliss  hereafter.  Laz- 
arus was  so  poor  that  no  mention  is  made  of  his  burial, 
but  only  of  his  glorious  reception  into  the  heavenly  life. 
No  pageant  attended  him  to  his  last  earthly  resting- 
place.  He  was  doubtless  hurried  without  ceremony  into 
a  pauper's  grave.  But  when  he  has  crossed  the  river 
he  is  met  by  a  procession  of  angels  and  borne  in  state 
to  the  realms  of  light. 

The  rich  man  ivas  buried.  He  received  the  customary 
honors  from  his  fellow  men.  His  wealth  was  sufficient 
to  attract  a  crowd  and  to  purchase  the  tokens  of  earthly 

365 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

pomp  and  show.  Doubtless  there  were  eulogies  and 
flowers,  and  a  costly  tomb.  But  wath  the  tomb  the 
power  of  money  came  to  an  end.  Not  a  word  regarding 
the  attendance  of  angels  upon  his  departing  spirit.  Why? 
Because  he  was  rich?  No;  but  because  he  was  selfish. 
He  had  not  used  his  wealth  to  make  friends  who  should 
greet  his  arrival  in  the  other  world  with  gladness.  So 
far  as  this  world  was  concerned,  the  contrast  between 
the  two  men  is  chiefly  a  difference  between  great  wealth 
and  extreme  poverty.  It  is  a  contrast  based  on  posses- 
sions. Yet  there  is  also  the  implied  contrast  of  character. 
When  they  enter  the  other  world,  the  merely  superficial 
contrast  disappears.  Not  what  they  have,  but  what  they 
are  determines  their  condition.  The  complete  reversal  of 
their  relative  positions  is  a  mere  incident  of  the  story, 
not  by  any  means  the  statement  of  a  necessary  law. 
Lazarus  finds  a  ready  welcome  to  the  highest  joys  of  the 
future  world,  not  as  a  compensation  for  the  poverty  and 
trials  endured  in  this  world,  but  as  the  natural  fruitage 
of  a  worthy  character  that  had  perchance  been  developed 
by  means  of  these  same  trials.  Nor  is  the  lonely  torment 
of  the  rich  man  in  any  sense  a  counterbalancing  of  his 
earthly  comfort  and  wealth.  He  enters  that  life  alone, 
because,  having  used  his  wealth  selfishly,  it  had  made 
him  no  friends  who  should  come  to  greet  his  waiting 
spirit  on  the  borders  of  the  invisible  land.  He  finds  it 
a  place  of  torment  because,  his  riches  left  behind,  he  no 
longer  has  the  means  of  gratifying  his  desires;  because 
he  cannot  now  occupy  his  mind  with  the  pleasures  of 
sense,  and  across  the  field  of  memory  there  come  troop- 
ing a  host  of  opportunities  unimproved,  the  vision  of  a 
wasted  life,  an  army  of  poor  that  his  wealth  might  have 
relieved,  of  distressed  ones  to  whom  he  might  have  given 
comfort,  of  downtrodden  persons  whom  he  might  have 
lifted  up.  The  ghostly  shapes  of  regret  and  remorse, 
these  are  his  tormentors. 

As  to  the  detailed  description  of  Hades    (which   is 

366 


DIVES         AND  LAZARUS 

simply  a  general  term  signifying  the  abode  of  the  dead, 
both  good  and  bad)  we  can  say  but  little.  Clearly  it  is 
foolish  to  found  any  doctrine  upon  a  literal  interpretation 
of  the  picture,  since  that  is  not  original  with  the  Master. 
For  the  most  part  our  Saviour  merely  adopts  the  current 
notions  of  the  time,  which  would  be  intelligible  to  his 
hearers  and  sufficient  for  his  own  purpose,  without 
adding  a  word  either  of  confirmation  or  of  disapproval. 
At  a  few  points  the  necessities  of  the  story  determine 
its  form. 

If  any  reader  is  inclined  to  sneer  at  the  word  "flame" 
which  our  Saviour  uses  figuratively,  we  ask,  Is  material 
fire  worse  than  the  torments  of  a  guilty  conscience?  It 
is  difficult  to  understand  how  any  intelligent  person  can 
question  the  reality  or  the  dreadfulncss  of  future  woe 
who  has  either  experienced  or  observed  the  tormenting 
power  of  shame,  remorse  or  even  of  sinful  passion  in  the 
present  life.  How  many  a  man  is  there  in  the  world 
to-day  who  would  willingly  endure  the  burning  of  his 
body  if  he  could  by  that  means  destroy  the  power  of 
memory !  We  believe  in  the  existence  of  a  future  hell, 
not  because  we  have  been  taught  so,  but  because  we  may 
see  thousands  of  men  living  in  hell  to-day;  and  there 
is  nothing  in  Scripture,  philosophy,  nature,  or  reason 
which  gives  us  the  slightest  ground  for  expecting  that 
it  will  be  otherwise  with  them  hereafter  unless  they 
undergo  a  complete  change  in  character  and  mode  of 
life. 

But  this  is,  after  all,  aside  from  the  central  purpose 
and  teaching  of  our  parable.  That  is  brought  out  in  a 
single  expression.  As  in  the  dramatic  representation 
Dives  pleads  with  Abraham  to  send  Lazarus  to  him  with 
a  drop  of  comfort,  the  reply  comes,  "Between  us  and  you 
there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed,  that  they  that  would  pass 
from  hence  to  you  may  not  be  able."  What  is  this  gulf? 
And  by  whom  was  it  fixed  there  ?  One  of  our  ablest  ex- 
positors speaks  of  it  as  "the  gulf  which  God  had  fixed." 

367 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

Is  not  that  a  false  accusation  against  God?  What  had 
he  to  do  with  fixing  it  there?  The  only  person  in  the 
universe  who  could  put  that  gulf  there  was  Dives  him- 
self.    And  he  had  done  it  with  the  devil's  aid. 

You  all  know  how  that  is.  The  gulf  was  fixed  between 
Dives  and  Lazarus  long  before  they  died.  Dives  had 
surrounded  himself  with  an  impassable  barrier  of  pride 
and  selfishness  and  arrogance.  Lazarus  could  not  come 
anywhere  near  him.  Every  day  that  barrier  had  be- 
come broader,  deeper,  and  more  impassable.  Explo- 
sions of  violent  wrath  had  torn  deep  and  yawning  fis- 
sures. Little  words  and  deeds  of  unkindness  had  shelved 
away  its  banks,  haughty  looks  and  heartless  words  had 
dredged  its  channel  deep  and  wide,  until  that  wliich  was 
at  first  a  narrow  rift  over  which  the  men  might  easily 
have  clasped  hands  had  become  a  chasm  v/iiich  m.ight  not 
be  passed. 

Were  you  never  conscious  of  placing  a  like  gulf  be- 
tween yourself  and  some  friend?  You  had  been  in 
closest  friendship,  with  free  exchange  of  love  and  sym- 
pathy. But  in  a  moment  of  anger  or  thoughtlessness 
you  did  that  friend  a  wrong.  It  may  be  you  spoke  an 
unkind  word,  or  were  guilty  of  a  mean  action.  What 
was  the  result?  Why,  something  seemed  to  come  be- 
tween your  heart  and  the  heart  of  your  friend  that  parted 
you.  Your  friend  may  have  forgotten  the  word  or  the 
act  in  an  hour,  but  you  could  not  forget  it.  There  it 
stood  between  you,  perhaps  still  stands ;  and  no  kindness 
or  forgetfulness  on  his  part  can  remove  it.  Only  your- 
self can  do  that  by  confession  and  reparation  to  the  ut- 
most of  your  ability.  Until  you  thus  make  confession 
and  reparation  a  persistent  sense  of  restraint  on  your 
own  part  will  hamper  your  intercourse ;  and  if  this  be  in 
some  degree  deadened  by  the  passage  of  time,  there  will 
yet  be  no  restoration  of  the  former  perfect  frankness. 

So  men  by  their  sins  and  their  selfishness  are  daily 
placing  a  gulf  between  themselves  and  God  or  between 

368 


DIVES         AND         LAZARUS 

themselves  and  their  fellows.  And  every  such  gulf  must 
remain  through  eternity  if  it  be  not  removed  by  the  very 
persons  who  placed  it  there. 

Here  is  the  key  to  the  failure  of  many  an  effort  at  so- 
cial reform.  It  begins  at  the  wrong  end.  Two  classes 
of  society  become  separated  by  the  repL;llent  power  of 
selfishness,  and  eager  reformers  strive  to  remove  the  gulf 
between  them.  They  preach  to  each  class  concerning  the 
wrong-doings  of  the  other,  and  each  seeks  to  refonn  his 
neighbor.  Now,  social  gulfs  can  never  be  removed  in 
that  way.  Jesus  declared  the  true  method.  "Cast  out 
first  the  beam  out  of  thine  own  eye."  Each  class  must 
correct  the  wrongs  within  its  own  circle.  Divisions  and 
antagonisms  will  be  removed  when  men  become  more 
ready  to  repair  the  wrongs  themselves  have  done  than 
to  compel  others  to  mend  their  faulty  ways. 

We  cannot  dogmatize  upon  the  conditions  and  pos- 
sibilities of  the  future  state.  I  have  already  intimated 
that  it  will  not  do  to  press  the  figures  of  our  parable  too 
closely.  Nevertheless  there  is  in  that  word  "fixed"  a 
certain  profound  and  solemn  suggestion.  Does  it  im- 
ply that  there  is  no  possibility  of  change  or  repentance 
after  death?     Are  we  indeed 

"Fixed  in  an  eternal  state"? 

Any  attempt  to  answer  that  question  would  be  mere 
speculation.  But  there  are  certain  familiar  facts  which 
none  can  dispute. 

Everywhere  we  may  see  this  tendency  of  things  to 
become  fixed.  A  habit  long  indulged  fastens  itself  upon 
us  with  ever-increasing  force.  It  is  harder  to  shake  off 
with  every  passing  day.  So  with  a  feeling  or  a  pas- 
sion. So  with  the  gulf  that  parts  our  friendship  or  sun- 
ders our  relations.  Who  does  a  wrong  and  neglects  to 
make  reparation  finds  that  every  moment  of  delay  makes 
it  increasingly  difficult  to  restore  the  old  relations.     May 

369 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

it  not  be  that  after  years  of  delay  this  difficulty  shall 
harden  into  impossibility?  The  modern  scientific  ideal 
of  the  reign  of  law  gives  sinful  men  less  hope  in  this 
direction  than  does  the  Bible.  Now  we  are  able  to 
bridge  these  gulfs  or  even  to  close  them.  Do  we  know 
that  we  shall  be  able  to  do  so  hereafter  ?  It  is  a  terrible 
fact  which  we  may  all  see  illustrated  daily  that  a  man 
may  do  in  a  moment  what  he  cannot  undo  in  a  thousand 
years.  May  we  not,  therefore,  do  in  this  life  that  which 
we  cannot  undo  in  eternity  ? 

The  closing  scene  of  the  parable  represents  Dives  as 
asking  that  Lazarus  be  sent  to  warn  his  brethren  against 
following  in  his  footsteps.  But  Abraham  replies,  "They 
have  Moses  and  the  prophets;  let  them  hear  them." 
Dives  persists^  "Nay,  father  Abraham :  but  if  one  go  to 
them  from  the  dead,  they  will  repent."  But  Abraham 
gives  the  final  blow  to  his  hopes  with  the  v/ords,  "If 
they  hear  not  Moses  and  the  prophets,  neither  will  they 
be  persuaded,  if  one  rise  from  the  dead." 

In  other  words,  every  man  has  sufficient  light  to  guide 
him  to  righteousness  of  life  in  this  world  and  to  salva- 
tion in  the  next.  The  conditions  of  the  future  world  are 
not  wholly  dissimilar  to  present  conditions.  Its  light  and 
truth  will  not  be  utterly  new,  but  will  be  the  infinite  and 
glorious  completeness  of  that  which  we  now  have  in 
part.  If  men  reject  present  light  because  it  reveals  too 
clearly  the  imperfections  and  weaknesses  of  human  char- 
acter, how  much  more  would  they  reject  that  perfect 
light  which  would  bring  out  every  flaw  and  stain  before 
the  eyes  of  a  gazing  world !  It  is  true  beyond  a  perad- 
venture  that  where  natural  influences  fail  to  turn  the 
heart  from  sin,  supernatural  forces  are  utterly  useless. 
He  who  will  not  listen  to  the  message  of  God  as  it  comes 
through  the  commonplace  human  messenger,  would  only 
ridicule  a  message  sent  at  the  hand  of  angels  or  spirits. 

I  find  in  this  concluding  dialogue  not  a  new  and  inde- 
pendent truth,  but  only  one  more  ray  of  light  shining 

370 


DIVES         AND  LAZARUS 

upon  our  central  thought.  In  the  clear  and  sufficient 
light  of  present  knowledge  we  suffer  ourselves  to  fix 
broad  gulfs  between  our  souls  and  our  fellows.  We 
see  those  gulfs  being  made  daily  broader  and  deeper. 
We  note  the  operation  of  laws  which  threaten  to  make 
them  permanent  and  impassable,  yet  we  do  not  arouse 
ourselves  to  the  work  of  removing  them.  We  quiet  our 
fears  with  the  delusive  notion  that  supernatural  in- 
fluences and  forces  will  accomplish  what  the  natural 
forces  have  failed  to  do ;  that  the  laws  which  we  here  see 
and  feel  will  be  wholly  subverted  in  their  action  by  other 
laws  and  forces  of  which  we  now  know  nothing. 

Jesus  appeals  to  our  reason  by  revealing  destiny  not 
as  the  judgment  of  an  arbitrary  and  omnipotent  God. 
but  as  the  natural  and  necessary  fruitage  of  our  own 
conduct  and  spirit.  Within  our  ken  and  control  are  these 
two  great  spiritual  forces  of  attraction  and  repulsion.  We 
may  so  ally  ourselves  with  the  forces  of  repulsion — sel- 
fishness, sin,  greed,  pride,  arrogance — that  we  shall 
thrust  ourselves  out  of  the  society  of  all  the  good  and  the 
true  and  the  loving  both  now  and  in  eternity.  Or,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  may  make  our  own  the  attractive  forces 
of  the  Spirit.  Our  lives  may  be  filled  with  the  power  of 
love,  of  righteousness,  of  self-sacrifice,  and  of  truth,  and 
so  we  may  weave  our  lives  into  an  ever-growing  fellow- 
ship of  good,  into  that  universe  of  blessedness  where 

"All  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  whole, 
Whose  body  Nature  is,  and  God  the  soul." 


371 


The  Empty  House 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

The  Empty  House 

SPIRITUAL   RELAPSE 

Matt.  12:43-45 

Te7i\..—''HeJindeth  it  empty."'— Mzxr.  12:44 

N  any  sickness  a  relapse  is  more  to  be  dreaded  than 
the  original  attack.  Not  only  is  the  patient 
weaker  and  less  able  to  withstand  the  attack,  but 
the  disease  itself  is  usually  more  violent  and 
deadly.  Hence  the  wise  physician  guards  most 
carefully  against  such  a  catastrophe.  He  does  not  satisfy 
himself  with  merely  driving  out  the  intruder  from 
the  system,  but  seeks  to  build  up  the  strength  of  his 
patient  and  to  restore  him  to  a  condition  of  positive 
health  so  that  the  returning  germs  may  find  no  congenial 
lodgment  or  even  avenue  of  entrance  into  the  organism 
of  the  body. 

In  the  treatment  of  bodily  ills  this  principle  is  univer- 
sally recognized  to-day,  and  we  think  more  of  cultivating 
positive  health  than  of  the  mere  resistance  or  expulsion 
of  disease.  The  time  is  surely  coming  when  we  shall  cease 
to  estimate  the  skill  and  worth  of  a  physician  by  the 
number  of  his  cures  or  even  the  greatness  of  them,  and 
shall  measure  his  value  to  the  com.munity  by  the  fewness 
of  his  cases.  More  and  more  clearly  is  it  being  seen 
that  the  true  function  of  the  medical  profession  is  to 
build  up  positive  health  in  individuals  and  the  commu- 
nity, and  not  merely  to  cure  or  drive  out  disease. 

375 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

When,  however,  we  deal  with  moral  and  spiritual  ills, 
we  are  commonly  satisfied  with  merely  negative  effort. 
Our  sole  care  is  to  expel  evil,  and  we  often  fail  to  for- 
tify the  life  by  the  positive  cultivation  of  the  good.  What 
wonder  if  we  are  disheartened  by  many  a  fatal  relapse? 

It  is  this  spiritual  failure,  resulting  from  inadequate 
aims  and  methods  in  religious  work,  that  confronted  our 
Lord  and  called  forth  the  parable  of  which  our  text  is 
the  focus. 

The  story  is  incomplete,  in  fact  it  can  scarcely  be  called 
a  story  at  all^  yet  it  is  exceedingly  vivid  and  dramatic. 
Perhaps  it  is  based  upon  some  one  of  our  Lord's  many 
miracles,  the  beneficent  purpose  of  which  had  been  frus- 
trated by  the  neglect  of  the  one  in  whom  it  had  been 
wrought.  However  that  may  be,  the  circumstances  of 
condition  and  result  are  put  before  us  in  the  most  unmis- 
takable fashion,  and  the  meaning  of  the  picture  is  self- 
evident. 

A  demoniac  has  been  set  free  from  his  terrible  thral- 
dom, but  has  made  no  use  of  his  freedom.  The  restored 
mind  is  left  vacant,  the  life  is  empty.  The  unclean  spirit 
personified  is  represented  as  wandering  about  in  the  vain 
search  for  some  other  dwelling-place,  and  finally  as  re- 
turning to  find  his  former  abode  "empty,  swept,  and 
garnished."  What  is  the  result?  He  calls  other  spirits 
to  enter  with  him  and  take  new  and  stronger  possession. 
In  other  words,  there  is  a  relapse  of  insanity  with  seven- 
fold increase  of  violence.  Though  allegorical  in  form, 
the  sketch  is  a  literal  description  of  disease  and  relapse 
because  of  inadequate  treatment.  And  in  the  most 
literal  interpretation  it  is  remarkably  true  to  the  modern 
germ  theories  of  disease.  The  focus  of  the  story  is  in 
the  words,  "He  findeth  it  empty."  On  this  point  all  the 
lines  of  the  picture  converge.  Here  is  the  kernel  of  the 
truth. 

I  have  said  that  it  was  spiritual  failure  resulting  from 
inadequate  aims  and  methods  in  religious  work  that  called 

376 


SPIRITUAL         RELAPSE 

forth  this  first  recorded  parable  of  Jesus.  It  is  like 
failure,  oft-repeated  in  our  own  lives  and  experience, 
that  gives  to  the  parable  its  present  interest,  yes,  that 
makes  its  lesson  of  perennial  value. 

An  interpretation  of  the  parable  seems  almost  un- 
necessary. Its  meaning  lies  on  its  very  surface.  That 
empty  dwelling  represents  not  merely  a  vacant  mind  in- 
viting the  return  of  the  evicted  demon,  it  also  mirrors 
many  an  empty  life,  from  which  demons  of  sin  in  various 
forms  have  been  expelled,,  but  which  has  never  been  filled 
with  positive  virtue  or  worthy  activity.  The  message 
of  the  parable  is  a  message  of  warning  against  the  folly 
of  merely  negative  effort  in  the  battle  with  sin  whether 
it  be  in  our  hearts  or  in  the  world.  Such  effort  it 
declares  to  be  futile.  It  is  not  enough  to  free  a  life  from 
evil,  to  drive  out  a  given  wrong  from  a  community.  If 
the  work  is  to  be  permanent  and  successful,  if  it  is  to 
have  any  real  moral  value,  there  must  follow  some  posi- 
tive work  by  which  the  life  shall  be  filled  with  that  which 
is  good.  Otherwise  the  relief  will  be  temporary  and  a 
reaction  will  surely  follow.  If  the  cleansed  abode  be  left 
unoccupied,  the  powers  of  evil  will  surely  return  and 
entrench  themselves  anew  with  multiplied  force. 

To  put  the  theme  of  the  parable  in  a  single  sentence, 
it  teaches  us  that    Emptiness  invites  evil. 

Natural  scientists  have  expressed  the  same  truth  in 
other  words.  They  tell  us  that  "Nature  abhors  a  vacu- 
um." That  is  to  say,  emptiness  is  unnatural.  They 
might  almost  say  that  emptiness  is  impossible  and  un- 
thinkable. Certainly  it  is  contrary  to  the  divine  order 
in  the  universe.  Seek  where  you  will  you  cannot  find 
a  really  empty  space  in  the  natural  world.  Remove  any 
substance  from  a  given  place  and  something  else  immedi- 
ately comes  in  to  fill  the  space  thus  vacated.  Every  school- 
boy or  girl  is  familiar  with  this  law  of  matter.  I  take 
a  glass  filled  with  water  and  pour  out  the  contents.  The 
place  originally  occupied  by  the   water  is   immediately 

377 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

filled  with  air.  To  prove  this  I  have  only  to  fill  the  glass 
with  water  once  more  and  carefully  place  a  sheet  of  stiff 
paper  over  the  top  in  such  a  manner  as  to  exclude  the 
air.  I  can  then  invert  the  glass,  holding  it  with  its  mouth 
downwards,  and  the  water  will  remain  in  the  glass  and 
keep  the  paper  in  its  place.  Why  is  this  ?  Because  there 
is  no  opening  for  the  admission  of  air,  and  the  water 
cannot  come  out  till  something  else  is  admitted  to  take 
its  place.  Leave  never  so  small  an  opening  for  the  ad- 
mission of  air,  and  water  and  paper  will  fall  to  the 
ground  in  an  instant.  It  is  a  matter  of  great  difficulty, 
if  not  an  absolute  impossibility,  to  produce  a  vacuum  for 
any  purpose. 

Now  what  is  true  in  nature  is  equally  true  in  life. 
Fulness  is  the  divine  order  in  the  one  sphere  as  truly 
as  in  the  other.  The  empty  life  violates  a  fundamental 
law  of  nature.  It  is  an  anomaly.  Not  only  so,  but  an 
unused  faculty  or  element  of  life,  a  vacant  apartment  in 
the  spiritual  structure,  is  unnatural.  The  perfect  man  is 
the  full  man,  the  complete  man,  the  man  with  every 
appetite  and  passion,  every  faculty  and  power,  perfect- 
ly developed  and  wholly  devoted  to  its  appointed  service. 

Emptiness  is  not  holiness,  though  it  is. often  mistaken 
for  that,  and  is  made  the  end  of  religious  or  moral 
effort.  How  often,  for  example,  do  men  speak  of  the 
Ten  Commandments  as  "The  Moral  Law."  Now  as  a 
matter  of  fact  there  is  not  the  smallest  item  of  morality 
in  the  Decalogue.  Those  commands  are  mostly  nega- 
tive and  prohibitory.  They  are  mere  injunctions  against 
immorality.  One  may  keep  the  Ten  Commandments 
perfectly  and  yet  be  utterly  wanting  in  moral  character. 

A  like  notion  inspires  the  everlasting  "Don't"  which 
renders  miserable  the  lives  of  so  many  children.  And 
we  may  find  not  a  few  Christian  disciples  whose  religious 
ideals  are  summed  up  in  the  phrase,  "To  keep  himself 
unspotted  from  the  world."  "But,"  you  say,  "is  not  that 
ideal  warranted  by  the  Scriptures?     Is  it  not  the  ideal 

378 


SPIRITUAL         RELAPSE 

which  the  apostle  James  has  given  to  us?"  Not  by  any 
means.  Those  words  form  only  a  part  of  James'  reli- 
gious ideal,  and  the  last  part  at  that.  They  are  a  sort 
of  spiritual  afterthought.  He  lays  down  as  first  in  im- 
portance certain  positive  and  Christly  service. 

Our  parable  suggests  several  truths  that  have  been 
made  familiar  by  the  common  experience  of  multitudes 
of  unsuccessful  workers  in  the  field  of  morals  and  re- 
ligion. First  of  these  is  the  difficulty  of  maintaining  an 
empty  life.  We  know  how  difficult  it  is  to  produce  and 
maintain  even  an  approximate  vacuum  in  the  material 
world.  The  instruments  and  vessels  must  be  strong  and 
well  made.  Even  then  you  must  be  content  with  partial 
and  imperfect  results.  It  requires  far  greater  strength 
to  hold  nothing  than  to  hold  something,  whatever  that 
something  may  be.     Not  otherwise  is  it  with  the  life. 

Here  and  there  we  see  a  man  who  can  drive  out  some 
evil  habit  or  appetite  or  tendency  from  his  life  and  keep 
it  out  by  sheer  strength  of  will,  but  such  men  are  few. 
Where  one  succeeds  hundreds  fail.  We  wonder  at  the 
weakness  of  men  in  the  face  of  temptation,  and  blame 
them  for  yielding,  but  we  often  fail  to  realize  the  great- 
ness of  the  task  set  for  them. 

What  is  true  in  the  individual  life  is  not  less  true  in 
the  community  or  the  State.  The  difficulty  of  enforcing 
prohibitory  laws  is  proverbial.  We  secure  a  prohibitory 
enactment  in  the  city  or  State  and  then  call  upon  our  offi- 
cials to  enforce  it.  Do  they  fulfil  our  expectations? 
Not  once  in  a  hundred  times.  Occasionally  there  arises 
an  official  of  extraordinary  energy  and  devotion  who 
enforces  the  law  when  conditions  are  favorable.  But 
it  calls  for  continual  watchfulness  and  unflagging  zeal. 
Even  then  the  chances  are  that  for  the  sake  of  the  one 
ordinance  many  others  are  neglected.  A  Neal  Dow  be- 
comes famous  for  his  enforcement  of  prohibition  in  his 
own  State,  but  he  does  not  stand  as  a  model  executive 
in  other  matters.    So  difficult  a  task  is  it  to  enforce  pro- 

379 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

hibitory  laws  that  it  can  only  be  done  at  the  expense  of 
other  important  public  duties,  and  then  there  come  fre- 
quent and  fatal  reactions  both  in  official  zeal  and  public 
opinion. 

The  fact  is  that  every  vice  whether  individual  or  pub- 
lic represents  a  need  of  the  life.  It  fills  a  part  of  the 
life.  To  repress  the  vice  without  doing  anything  further 
is  to  leave  the  need  unsatisfied,  that  portion  of  life  va- 
cant, and  unless  something  else  is  given  to  supply  the 
need  or  to  fill  the  emptied  space,  the  life  thus  left  vacant 
ofifers  a  perpetual  and  urgent  invitation  for  the  return 
of  evil. 

Again,  our  parable  depicts  not  only  the  difficulty  but 
also  the  danger  of  an  empty  life.     The   old  proverb, 

"Satan   finds   some   mischief   still 
For  idle  hands  to  do," 

is  proving  itself  true  every  day.  The  young  men  and 
women  from  our  quiet  country  towns  come  to  the  city 
to  seek  a  living.  We  recognize  this  transition  as  a  time 
of  peculiar  danger.  Many  a  life  that  has  been  sober, 
safe  and  promising  in  its  early  surroundings  quickly 
becomes  the  prey  of  evil  amid  the  new  scenes.  Why? 
Is  the  youth  liable  to  temptation  from  shopmates  while 
busy  at  his  tasks?  No,  The  time  of  danger  is  in  the 
evening  hours  when  the  toil  of  the  day  is  over  and  there 
is  nothing  to  do.  The  familiar  occupations  and  pleasures, 
the  numerous  companionships  of  the  old  home  are  gone, 
and  time  hangs  heavily  on  the  hands.  Then  comes  the 
feeling  of  loneliness  and  vacancy,  and  almost  any  invi- 
tation is  accepted  as  a  means  of  filling  the  empty  hours. 
So  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  idle  hours  of  evening  have 
been  the  fatal  weakness  of  many  a  young  life.  From 
these  idle  hours  has  dated  the  beginning  of  wrong-doing. 
What  is  the  period  of  danger  in  the  life  of  a  nation? 
Is  it  the  time  of  error  and  superstition?     Is  it  the  time 

38Q 


SPIRITUAL      RELAPSE 

when  the  people  believe  in  false  gods  and  blindly  accept 
the  teachings  of  paganism?  No.  It  is  rather  the  period 
of  religious  vacancy  which  intervenes  between  the  reign 
of  the  false  and  the  true.  It  is  that  period  wilen  tlie 
people,  convinced  that  the  old  religion  is  worthless,  have 
cast  it  aside  and  have  not  yet  received  any  other  faith 
in  its  place.  Agnosticism  or  doubt  is  infinitely  more 
dangerous  than  even  false  religion.  It  is  spiritual  emp- 
tiness which  opens  a  willing  door  to  temptation. 

Spiritual  emptiness  is  spiritual  danger  alike  for  youth 
and  for  nations.  There  is  safety  in  fulness.  Tempta- 
tion finds  no  avenue  of  entrance  into  the  occupied  soul. 
The  busy  life  escapes  many  an  assault  that  would  be 
fatal  to  the  idler.  We  know  not  how  much  of  our  im- 
munity from  moral  evil  we  owe  to  the  burdens  that  fill 
our  lives  and  of  which  we  often  complain  most  bitterly. 

Furthermore,  the  empty  life  is  the  useless  life.  The 
world  is  no  richer  for  any  number  of  lives  that  are  merely 
free  from  evil.  The  most  respectable  and  spotless  do- 
nothing  merely  leaves  a  blank  page  in  the  volume  of 
history.  It  is  positive  virtue,  active  righteousness  that 
blesses  the  world. 

The  religion  of  the  Jews  was  a  religion  of  emptiness. 
Their  ideal  of  righteousness  seemed  to  be  mere  inaction. 
To  them  the  holiness  of  the  Sabbath  demanded  the  pro- 
hibition of  all  labor  of  whatsoever  sort.  In  the  number- 
less prohibitions  by  which  they  interpreted  and  refined 
the  simple  statements  of  the  Fourth  Commandment  they 
betray  the  notion  that  inaction  or  vacuity  is  holiness. 
To  do  nothing  on  the  Sabbath  was  to  hallow  the  day 
most  perfectly. 

The  same  religious  ideal  has  prevailed  in  all  ages.  It 
prevails  to-day.  Most  of  us  believe  that  true  piety  con- 
sists largely  in  not  doing  wrong.  In  contrast  with  this 
notion  stands  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  which  is  above 
all  things  else  a  positive  gospel.  Its  key-word  is  "Ful- 
ness."   "Of  his  fulness  have  all  we  received,"  says  John. 

381 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

And  Paul,  grasping  the  true  sense  of  the  divine  will, 
prays  for  his  brethren  that  they  may  "be  filled  with  all 
the  fulness  of  God," 

"The  fulness  of  God" — that  should  be  our  thought 
for  ourselves  and  for  all  men.  Not  to  lop  of?  a  vice  here 
and  there ;  not  to  repress  or  drive  out  different  forms  of 
evil  and  to  leave  the  life  clean  but  empty,  but  to  fill  all 
life  with  a  divine  fulness,  to  cultivate  in  all  men  a  spirit 
of  positive  righteousness,  to  employ  every  power  and  to 
occupy  every  element  of  our  human  nature  with  holy 
service — that  should  be  the  aim. 

If  emptiness  invites  evil,  fulness  assures  freedom.  The 
great  Dr.  Chalmers  of  Scotland  has  a  notable  sermon  on 
"The  Expulsive  Power  of  a  New  Affection."  There  is 
the  gospel  in  a  nutshell.  Evil  driven  out  and  kept  out 
by  the  infilling  of  divine  love — there  is  the  secret  of 
easy  and  permanent  triumph  over  temptation.  There 
is  the  infallible  recipe  for  a  strong  and  growing  moral 
character.  Fill  the  life  with  the  love  of  God.  Fill  the 
mind  with  holy  thoughts.  Fill  the  soul  with  heavenly 
aspirations.  Fill  the  hands  with  Christly  deeds.  And 
without  efifort,  almost  without  consciousness,  the  sinful 
thoughts  and  words  and  deeds  will  be  expelled  and  kept 
out  of  the  life.  The  disease  of  sin  will  be  naturally  and 
permanently  displaced  by  the  growing  power  of  a  posi- 
tive moral  and  spiritual  health. 


383 


The  Proof  of 
Obedience 


CHAPTER  XXX 

The  Proof  of 
Obedience 

THE  TWO  SONS 

Matt.  21:28-32 

Ttx\..—''  Which  of  the  tnxjo  did  the  luill  of  his  Jather  F^'—MnXX.  21:31 

PPOSITION  from  the  chief  priests  and  el- 
ders called  forth  this  parable,  and  to  them 
it  is  primarily  addressed.  They  had  con- 
fronted Jesus  in  the  midst  of  his  beneficent 
work  and  had  challenged  his  authority. 
In  a  brief  but  effectual  manner  he  had  answered  their 
challenge  and  silenced  their  criticism.  Now  he  makes 
a  positive  attack  upon  their  own  claims  as  religious 
teachers,  with  one  parable  forcing  them  to  self- 
condemnation,  with  a  second  leading  them  to  pronounce 
sentence  upon  themselves,  and  finally  closing  in  upon 
them  with  a  third  which  was  well  calculated  to  drive  the 
truth  home  to  their  hearts. 

The  parable  of  The  Two  Sons,  to  which  our  present 
thought  will  be  given,,  follows  close  upon  the  discussion 
of  authority.  Its  purpose  is  to  convict  these  captious 
critics  of  their  unfitness  to  challenge  the  authority  of  the 
speaker  or  to  criticize  his  work.  Its  method  is  to  con- 
trast them  with  a  class  of  persons  whom  they  despised 
to  their  own  manifest  disadvantage. 

The  details  of  the  story  are  few  and  exceedingly  sim- 
ple. There  is  no  mistaking  the  personality  of  the  father 
or  the  significance  of  his  command,  "Go  work  to-day  in 

385 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

my  vineyard."  It  is  a  common  representation  of  the 
heavenly  Father's  call  to  obedience  and  service. 

The  first  son,  with  his  surly  "I  will  not"  followed  by 
repentance  and  active  obedience,  plainly  stands  for  those 
who  had  rudely  disregarded  the  commands  of  God,  liv- 
ing in  open  sin,  but  had  been  touched  by  the  power  of  the 
Spirit  and  brought  to  repentance — the  publicans  and 
sinners  who  had  welcomed  the  preaching  of  John  the 
Baptist  and  had  profited  by  it. 

The  second  son,  with  his  ready  "I  go,  sir"  that  is  not 
followed  by  obedient  action,  no  less  clearly  represents 
those  who  profess  a  willingness  to  obey  God,  who  fall 
in  with  the  approved  forms  and  services  of  religion,  but 
who  really  live  for  themselves  alone.  In  short,  he  rep- 
resents the  chief  priests  and  elders  themselves  with  their 
respectability  and  conventional  piety  which  had  not  in  it 
a  single  spark  of  love  for  God  or  genuine  devotion  to 
his  service. 

The  story  ended,,  the  Master  guards  against  any  false 
application  and  compels  attention  to  its  vital  point  by  the 
question,  "Whether  of  them  twain  did  the  will  of  his 
father?"  To  that  question  there  can  be  but  one  answer, 
and  the  hearers  reply  as  with  a  single  voice,  "The 
first." 

Then  comes  the  home  thrust  of  personal  application 
which  is  now  absolutely  unavoidable.  "Verily  I  say  unto 
you,  That  the  publicans  and  the  harlots  go  into  the  king- 
dom of  God  before  you.  For  John  came  unto  you  in 
the  way  of  righteousness,  and  ye  believed  him  not:  but 
the  publicans  and  the  harlots  believed  him :  and  ye,  when 
ye  had  seen  it,  repented  not  afterward,  that  ye  might  be- 
lieve him.'* 

Thus  these  men  who  professed  to  recognize  God's 
authority,  setting  themselves  up  as  champions  of  re- 
ligion and  defenders  of  the  faith,  are  self-convicted  of 
utter  irreligion.  By  their  own  judgment  they  are  de- 
clared to  be  the  disobedient  ones,  wholly  indifferent  to 

386 


THE  TWO  SONS 

the  authority  which  they  acknowledge.  Their  very 
quibbhngs  about  authority  and  their  refinements  of  law 
and  precept  are  but  schemes  for  evading  obedience  to 
that  divine  will  to  which  they  profess  unswerving 
allegiance. 

So  much  for  the  historic  setting.  That  is  only  the 
frame  of  the  mirror.  Let  us  now  look  into  the  polished 
surface  of  the  mirror  itself  that  we  may  discover  what 
larger  truth  it  will  reveal  to  us.  The  story  reflects  the 
American  life  of  to-day  as  clearly  as  it  did  the  Jewish 
life  of  our  Lord's  time.  The  chief  priests  and  elders  are 
away  in  the  background  now.  Let  them  fade  wholly 
from  sight.  Those  faces  right  at  the  front  are  yours 
and  mine.  Preachers  of  the  gospel,  leading  church-mem- 
bers, highly  reputable  citizens  are  here  reflected. 

Before  we  study  the  figures  reflected  in  its  surface, 
let  us  carefully  adjust  the  mirror  lest  it  send  back  to  us 
a  distorted  image.  In  other  words,  let  us  make  sure  that 
v/e  get  the  details  of  the  story  each  in  its  proper  relation 
and  with  the  true  emphasis. 

Where  is  the  focus  of  the  parable?  Upon  what  point 
does  the  significant  emphasis  rest?  On  the  answers 
which  the  young  men  gave  to  their  father's  command? 
Clearly  not;  else  Jesus  would  have  made  that  the  point 
of  his  application.  He  concentrates  the  thought,  not 
upon  their  answers,  but  upon  their  action.  In  the  light 
of  his  interpretation  the  force  and  meaning  of  the  para- 
ble lie  in  the  contrasted  verbs,  "went"  and  "went  not." 
It  is  a  picture  of  obedience  in  contrast  with  disobedience. 
It  is  doing  over  against  not  doing. 

No  distinct  point  is  made  regarding  the  answers  of 
the  two  sons.  They  have  no  independent  significance 
in  the  story.  Their  purpose  is  merely  tributary.  Their 
import  lies  in  the  added  emphasis  which  they  give  to  the 
contrasted  action.  The  first  refusal  of  the  one  makes 
the  final  obedience  more  noticeable,  as  first  assent  ren- 
ders more  conspicuous  the  final  disobedience  of  the  other. 

387 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

Let  us  dwell  upon  this  point  a  moment  longer,  for  it 
is  vital.  A  superficial  interpretation  of  this  part  of  the 
parable  has  made  it  an  apparent  extenuation  of  real  un- 
righteousness. Let  us  then  be  very  clear  as  to  its  exact 
bearing  at  the  outset.  Neither  in  the  narrative  itself  nor 
in  its  application  by  our  Lord  is  there  any  approval  of  the 
rude  "I  v^ill  not"  of  the  first  son.  His  answer  is  not 
excused  or  condoned.  There  it  stands  with  its  own  con- 
demnation stamped  upon  its  very  face.  It  is  wholly 
wrong.  It  has  no  merit,  but  is  inexcusable.  It  is  not 
an  aid  to  obedience.  It  does  not  bespeak  anything  good 
in  him  who  utters  it,  not  even  frankness ;  for  boorishness 
is  not  frankness.  We  find  in  the  answer  no  promise  of 
coming  repentance  and  service.  So  far  as  it  goes,  it  is 
a  promise  of  disobedience;  hence  it  is  evil  and  only  evil. 
In  itself  it  is  a  serious  obstacle  to  right  action.  The  obe- 
dience that  followed  is  rendered  more  difficult  and  un- 
likely by  this  refusal. 

Again,  fix  firmly  in  your  mind  the  fact  that  the  vital 
contrast  in  the  picture  is  the  contrast  between  doing  and 
not  doing.  The  parable  is  not  a  popular  tirade  on  "Prac- 
tise versus  Profession."  The  action  of  the  first  son. 
expressed  in  the  words,  "Afterward  he  repented,  and 
went,"  is  not  in  any  way  set  over  against  the  answer  of 
the  second,  "I  go^  sir."  No  comparison  is  made  or  im- 
plied between  works  and  words.  Action  is  contrasted 
with  inaction;  and  the  counter  contrast  of  the  replies  is 
simply  a  side-light  by  which  the  central  truth  is  more 
vividly  illuminated. 

We  shall  miss  the  point  of  the  parable  if  we  ask, 
"Which  was  the  better  of  the  two  sons?"  or,  "Which  of 
the  sons  did  Jesus  approve?"  We  are  not  concerned 
with  comparative  goodness.  Jesus  did  not  approve 
either  of  the  young  men.  Both  of  them  did  wrong.  But 
the  first,  becoming  ashamed  of  his  wrong-doing,  repents 
and  begins  to  do  right.  And  that  is  the  only  commend- 
able thing  about  him.     The   single  question  which   the 

388 


THE  TWO  SONS 

parable  is  designed  to  enforce  is  one  of  obedience  and 
disobedience.  It  is  embodied  in  the  words,  "Whether 
of  them  twain  did  the  will  of  his  father?" 

Interpreting  the  parable,  it  is  very  natural  to  say,  The 
two  sons  represent  two  contrasted  classes  of  men.  In 
one  we  see  the  type  of  that  class  who  have  come  to  God 
by  repentance  from  lives  of  open  sin  and  ungodliness. 
Having  forsaken  their  evil  ways  they  have  given  them- 
selves to  humble  obedience  and  hearty  service.  The 
other  is  a  picture  of  those  more  respectable  and  pliable 
persons  who,  with  an  easy-going  conformity  to  popular 
ideals,  have  declared  their  purpose  to  live  in  obedience 
to  the  divine  commands,  but  whose  daily  lives  do  not 
make  good  their  promise. 

It  is  no  uncommon  thing  for  an  out-and-out  sinner, 
standing  upon  the  supposed  ground  of  this  parable,  to 
rail  at  the  hypocrite  within  the  Christian  Church  and  to 
take  great  credit  to  himself  for  his  own  sincerity;  as 
though  Jesus  had  instituted  a  contrast  between  blas- 
phemy or  vileness  and  hypocrisy,  commending  the  one 
and  condemning  the  other. 

Such  a  use  of  the  parable  grows  out  of  two  false  or  at 
least  groundless  assumptions.  First,,  it  assumes  that  the 
answer  of  the  first  son,  "I  will  not,"  is  in  itself  praise- 
worthy. Again,  it  assumes  that  the  "I  go,  sir,"  of  the 
second  was  intentionally  untrue.  In  point  of  fact  neither 
of  these  assumptions  is  warranted  by  the  story.  On  the 
contrary  every  intelligent  reader  of  the  New  Testament 
must  feel  that  the  reply  of  the  first  son  was  altogether 
rude  and  unfilial.  Had  he  made  his  words  true  by  act- 
ual disobedience,  his  conduct  would  present  no  redeem- 
ing feature.  He  is  saved  from  unqualified  condemna- 
tion only  by  his  subsequent  shame,  repentance,  and  dili- 
gent service.  And  as  to  the  second,  whatever  its  purpose, 
his  answer  is  the  only  one  befitting  a  true  and  loyal  son. 
It  is  clearly  framed  by  the  Master  to  win  our  approval, 
and  the  ground  of  condemnation  is  not  hypocrisy  in  word, 

389 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

but  failure  in  deed.  We  may  well  grant  that  at  the  mo- 
ment of  speaking  he  meant  what  he  said,  and  that  he  real- 
ly intended  to  go  to  work.  Give  him  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt.  Still,  he  is  a  disobedient  son.  Neglect  is  no  less 
fatal  to  obedience  than  is  hypocrisy. 

Could  anything  be  more  absurd,  in  the  light  of  this 
parable,,  than  the  attitude  of  the  man  who  says,  "I  make 
no  profession,  therefore  nothing  is  to  be  expected  of 
me?"  Did  the  refusal  of  the  first  son  in  the  slightest 
degree  lesson  the  pressure  of  his  duty  to  obey  his  father? 
Or  did  the  assent  of  the  second  add  a  feather's  weight 
to  his  responsibility?  Of  course  not.  They  were  sons, 
and  that  word  "son"  is  not  meaningless.  Each  was  in 
duty  bound  to  obey  the  father.  So  every  man  is  in  duty 
bound  to  obey  God  and  to  render  him  willing  service. 
Duty  is  an  absolute  and  universal  matter  growing  out  of 
our  natural  relations  to  God  and  our  fellow  men.  It  is 
not  in  any  degree  conditioned  upon  our  personal  ac- 
knowledgment or  repudiation.  The  church-member  is  no 
more  bound  to  live  uprightly  than  the  non-church-mem- 
ber. The  most  outspoken  unbeliever  in  the  community 
is  just  as  truly  responsible  for  the  preaching  of  the  gospel 
and  the  conduct  of  highest  philanthropies  as  is  the  de- 
vout churchman  or  the  most  active  Christian  worker. 

We  waste  a  great  deal  of  time  and  mental  energy 
comparing  or  contrasting  sins.  We  ask  which  is  worse, 
our  sin  or  the  sin  of  our  neighbor,  and  we  are  pretty 
sure  to  conclude  that  his  is  the  worse.  Jesus  brings  us 
directly  to  the  vital  issue.  All  disobedience  is  sin,  and 
will  if  persisted  in  result  in  spiritual  death.  The  one 
great  question  for  every  life  is  not.  Am  I  better  than 
some  one  else  ?  but,  Am  I  doing  the  will  of  the  heavenly 
Father?  Am  I  living  up  to  the  standard  of  duty  that 
God  places  before  me  ? 

If,  therefore,  we  must  find  two  classes  whom  the  sons 
represent,  the  first  class  would  be  composed  of  repenting 
sinners,  earnestly  striving  to  atone  for  past  wrong  by 

390 


THE  TWO  SONS 

present  faithfulness  and  diligence;  the  second,  of  those 
who,  declaring  their  purpose  to  obey  God,  for  any  rea- 
son fail  to  render  the  promised  service.  Unrepentant 
sinners,  however  frank  they  may  be  in  acknowledging 
their  position,  cannot  find  shelter  in  any  part  of  this  story. 
Its  one  appeal  is  to  repentance  and  loving  service. 

Can  we  not,,  however,  come  closer  to  the  heart  of  the 
parable  than  is  possible  by  this  method?  Will  it  not 
speak  to  us  more  effectively  if  we  put  away  all  thought 
of  contrasting  classes  of  men  or  anything  else  outside 
of  ourselves.''  Let  each  one  of  us  search  for  his  own 
moral  features  in  both  the  sons.  Forget  everybody  else 
for  a  moment.  Here  are  two  relations  in  which  any 
one  of  us  may  stand  towards  God.  Here  are  two  atti- 
tudes of  heart,  two  courses  of  action  quite  possible  to 
you  and  to  me — may  I  not  say,  two  attitudes  often  ex- 
emplified in  us? 

You  may  have  said  to  the  commands  of  God,  you 
may  be  saying  at  this  moment,  "I  will  not."  Now  look 
in  this  mirror  and  see  whether  your  attitude  is  one  to  be 
proud  of.  Is  the  first  view  of  that  first  son  a  pleasing 
one?  Do  not  look  at  the  other  son.  We  have  nothing 
to  do  with  him  just  now.  Do  not  begin  to  say,  "Well, 
I  may  be  disobedient,  but  at  all  events  I  am  no  hypo- 
crite." What  of  that?  Will  it  help  the  man  who  is  dying 
of  smallpox  in  the  hospital  to  say  with  a  complacent 
sneer,  "Well,  I  may  be  very  sick,  but  I  haven't  the  yellow 
fever  like  that  miserable  fellow  over  there  in  the  next 
cot"?  Of  course  not,  you  say.  Neither  will  it  help  you 
in  any  way  to  point  to  some  other  sinner  who  is  worse 
in  your  estimation  than  yourself.  Comparisons  are  use- 
less. Worse  than  that,  they  may  be  fatal.  Keep  your 
eye  on  the  one  man.  Is  he  doing  the  will  of  his  father? 
No.  He  is  rebellious,  disobedient,  wicked.  He  is  trying 
to  buttress  his  disobedience  with  refusal.  And  that  is  a 
picture  of  yourself.  Do  you  admire  it?  Do  you  feel  like 
boasting  of  it  ?    No,  no !    Its  one  message  to  you  is  "Re- 

391 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

pent !"  Prove  by  future  obedience  that  you  are  ashamed 
of  present  sin.  Let  the  first  son  be  your  model,  but  not 
in  his  ungracious  denial.  Imitate  his  penitent  service. 
Let  the  faithfulness  of  your  endeavor  and  the  willingness 
of  your  sacrifice  be  the  witnesses  of  your  sincerity.  Do 
not  cheat  yourself  with  the  notion  that  mere  blunt  hon- 
esty, unblushing  candor,  is  praiseworthy.  But  one  thing 
is  praiseworthy — to  do  the  will  of  your  heavenly  Father, 
Again,  I  may  be  like  the  second  son,  assenting  to  the 
commands  of  God  in  an  easy,  good-natured  sort  of  a 
way,  meaning  to  obey  them,  yet  never  fulfilling  my 
promise  because  of  neglect  or  temptation.  Nothing  is 
easier  and  few  things  more  common  than  to  mistake 
mere  assent  to  divine  truth  for  obedience  to  the  divine 
will.  A  great  deal  of  our  modern  Christianity  consists 
in  simply  saying,  "I  go,  sir,"  to  God,  and  does  not  rep- 
resent any  form  of  doing  God's  will.  We  recite  our 
well-framed  creeds,  we  say  'Amen"  to  our  prayers,  Vvith 
apparent  fervor,  but  our  lives  are  not  affected  thereby. 
We  do  not  translate  our  creeds  and  our  prayers  into 
deeds  of  righteousness  and  love. 

Not  a  few  of  us  satisfy  ourselves  with  being  well  dis- 
posed towards  religion.  We  enjoy  the  preaching  of  the 
gospel.  We  take  delight  in  the  forms  of  worship  and  the 
services  of  God's  house,  and  are  desirous  that  they  should 
be  the  best  possible.  We  wish  to  be  numbered  among 
the  obedient  children  of  God  because  we  regularly  patron- 
ize the  church  and  her  services,  but  we  are  not  always 
careful  to  ask  whether  in  our  daily  lives  we  are  doing 
the  will  of  the  Father. 

Now  religious  enjoyment  is  not  Christianity.  Hear- 
ing, believing,  admiring  truth  is  not  obedience  to  God. 
It  will  not  save  our  own  souls  nor  help  others.  We  must 
do  the  truth  if  it  is  to  bless  anybody.  We  must  not  only 
believe  and  admire  the  words  of  Jesus,  we  must  obey 
them,  if  they  are  to  exert  a  regenerating  force  in  and 
through  us. 

392 


THE  TWO  SONS 

I  see  in  the  second  son  also  a  preacher  of  repentance. 
I  hear  him  utter  the  words  of  warning,  "Stay  not  with 
saying,  I  go ;  but  go,  work."  Make  your  practise  accord 
with  your  profession.  Make  your  life  enforce  your  creed. 
Carry  out  your  good  intentions,  or  they  will  prove  a 
snare  to  you.  "Mot  every  one  that  saith  unto  me.  Lord, 
Lord,  shall  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  but  he 
that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father  who  is  in  heaven." 

The  mirror  reflects  living  truth.  At  this  moment  the 
heavenly  Father  is  saying  to  each  one  of  us,  "Son,  go 
work  to-day  in  my  vineyard."  On  every  hand  are  the 
calls  for  service  that  are  the  echoes  of  the  Father's  voice. 
You  may  hear  that  voice  in  every  gospel  appeal  to  sur- 
render, confession  and  consecration.  You  may  see  that 
beckoning  hand  in  every  life  that  needs  your  help,  in 
every  cause  that  needs  assistance  and  every  wrong  that 
needs  resistance.  The  vineyard  of  the  Lord  is  all  about 
you,  not  far  off,  but  close  at  hand;  and  in  it  there  is 
work  enough  for  every  obedient  son.  For  want  of  la- 
borers the  weeds  are  growing  and  the  vines  are  drooping. 
Not  one  of  us  but  may  find  countless  opportunities  of 
service  for  God  and  man.  It  is  a  call  to  arduous  toil, 
to  patient  and  ceaseless  endeavor.  And  the  call  is  im- 
mediate— "Go,  work  to-day." 


393 


The  Irrepressible 
Conflict 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

The  Irrepressible 
Conflict 

THE    WICKED    HUSBANDMEN 

Matt.  21:33-41;   Mark  12:1-9;   Luke  20:9-16 
Text. — ^^The  inheritance  shall  be  ours.  " — Mark  12:7 

THE  Irrepressible  Conflict"  is  a  conflict  of 
wills.  The  endless  struggle  between  good 
and  ill,  between  right  and  wrong,  between 
the  kingdom  of  light  and  the  kingdom  of 
darkness,  is  at  bottom  a  struggle  between 
self-will  and  the  will  of  God.  The  fall  of  man  resulted 
from  the  first  assertion  of  self-will  in  rebellion  against 
divine  law.  Complete  redemption  will  follow  complete  and 
unconditional  surrender  of  the  human  will  to  the  will  of 
the  heavenly  Father.  Meanwhile  the  one  sin  and  dan- 
ger of  the  race,  the  sin  that  embraces  and  comprehends 
all  other  sin,  the  danger  that  overhangs  every  other 
danger,  is  the  assertion  of  self-will  on  the  part  of  the 
child  and  the  determination  to  make  self-will  supreme. 

Thi  ^  is  the  truth  expressed  in  the  parable  of  The 
Vineyard  and  the  Husbandman.  Originally  and  super- 
ficially it  is  a  parable  of  Jewish  history.  In  its  details 
we  see  an  accurate  picture  of  the  dealings  of  Jehovah 
with  Israel  and  the  return  which  the  Jewish  people  made 
to  his  love.  "Planted  a  vineyard,"  "Set  a  hedge,"  "Digged 
a  winepress/'  "Built  a  tower,"  what  are  these  but  so 
many  types  of  the  special  care  and  blessing  bestowed 

397 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

upon  the  "chosen  people"?  Do  they  not  suggest  spe- 
cifically the  founding  of  the  nation,  the  wonderful  sepa- 
ration of  the  one  people  from  all  others,  the  peculiar 
opportunities  for  service  enjoyed,  and  the  divine  reve- 
lation committed  to  them  ?  Do  they  not  at  the  same  time 
present  a  cumulative  reason  for  national  obedience  and 
fruitfulness  in  the  service  of  God? 

The  successive  messengers  who  were  sent  to  receive 
the  fruits  of  the  vineyard  on  behalf  of  their  lord,  do  they 
not  call  to  our  minds  the  long  line  of  prophets  who  came 
to  Israel  only  to  be  rejected  and  driven  out  with  bitter 
persecution?  Elijah  pursued  by  the  ceaseless  hatred  of 
Ahab  and  Jezebel,  Zechariah  stoned  to  death  in  the  reign 
of  Joash,  Jeremiah  imprisoned  in  the  foulest  of  dun- 
geons, Isaiah  sawn  asunder  by  order  of  Manasseh,  and, 
last  of  all,  John  the  Baptist  beheaded  to  satisfy  the  wrath 
of  Herod's  guilty  wife — these  all  came  as  messengers  of 
God  calling  for  the  fruits  of  godliness  in  the  life  of 
the  nation;  and  one  after  another  they  were  "beaten," 
"shamefully  handled,"  or  "killed."  After  these  comes 
the  Son  in  the  person  of  Jesus  himself,  with  the  fore- 
shadowing of  his  death. 

Is  it  strange  that  his  hearers  "perceived  that  he  spake 
this  parable  against  them"?  Would  they  not  have  been 
stupid  indeed  had  they  failed  to  note  the  parallelism? 
The  application  of  his  words  is  clear  as  midday.  And 
is  it  not  equally  clear  that  Jesus  sums  up  the  reason 
both  of  their  fathers'  hatred  of  the  prophets  and  of  their 
own  opposition  to  himself  in  the  words,  "the  inheritance 
shall  be  ours"?  Ahab,  Manasseh  and  Herod  were  very 
different  men  from  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  of  our 
Lord's  time;  but  they  had  one  quality  in  common  with 
them — self-will.  This  it  was  that  persecuted  the  proph- 
ets, and  this  it  was  that  even  now  conspired  to  slay 
the  Christ.  Had  the  prophets  conformed  their  message 
to  the  will  of  the  people,  they  would  have  been  canon- 
ized as  saints  and  subsidized  as  statesmen.     Had  Jesus 

398 


THE     WICKED     HUSBANDMEN 

obeyed  the  will  of  the  recognized  religious  teachers  of 
his  age  instead  of  making  the  will  of  God  supreme,  he 
would  have  been  received  by  them  with  open  arms,  pro- 
claimed by  them  as  the  expected  Messiah,  and  they  would 
have  followed  him  to  the  death.  But  with  Jesus  it  was, 
"Thy  will  be  done,"  while  with  the  Pharisees  it  was, 
"Our  will  be  done."  Between  these  two  there  can  be 
only  the  most  deadly  enmity. 

Such  is  the  original  message  of  our  parable  as  clearly 
revealed  in  its  setting  and  confirmed  by  its  effect.  For 
those  who  heard  'it,  this  message  was  final  and  vital.  For 
us  it  is  secondary  and  unimportant.  We  may  be  in- 
terested to  note  the  bearing  of  the  Master's  words  upon 
his  Jewish  auditors,  but  if  we  stay  with  that,  the  parable 
will  be  of  trifling  value  to  ourselves.  It  is  for  us  to 
seek  its  present  message,  its  living  and  permanent 
message. 

With  the  clearer  light  of  a  world  gospel,  let  us  cast 
the  picture  on  the  larger  screen  of  universal  human  life 
and  conduct.  The  Jews  perceived  that  he  spake  of  them. 
It  is  for  you  and  me  to  see  that  he  speaks  of  us.  The 
parable  is  a  reflection  of  human  life  in  general,  of  our 
lives  in  particular.  Let  us  draw  the  lines  on  this  larger 
scale. 

"A  man  planted  a  vineyard."  Every  nation,  every 
human  life,  is  a  planting  of  the  Lord.  To  each  one  of 
us  God  has  given  talents,  resources,  privileges,  possi- 
bilities, the  varied  elements  of  our  common  life;  and 
these  are  the  soil  from  which  may  be  produced  all  the 
fruits  of  noblest  manhood  to  enrich  the  kingdom  of 
God.  More  than  this,  has  not  every  life  its  hedge  of 
divine  Providence  protecting  it  from  enemies  that  would 
mar  its  f ruitfulness  ?  Is  any  life  without  its  wine-press 
of  opportunity  or  its  tower  of  revelation? 

God  has  not  held  these  things  in  his  own  keeping,  to 
be  worked  by  slaves.  He  has  let  them  out  to  us,  free, 
independent  husbandmen.    All  these  marvelous  gifts  of 

399 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

God  are  in  the  hands  of  men,  in  your  hands  and  mine, 
to  be  used  as  we  will.  But  with  such  provision  has  he 
not  a  right  to  expect  the  fruits  of  personal  development, 
of  human  progress,  of  righteous  living,  of  a  continual 
growth  and  perfecting  of  the  race  through  the  growth 
and  perfection  of  individuals  ? 

It  is  a  grand  truth  that  we  are  stewards  of  God.  For 
stewardship  implies  two  elements  of  greatness — free- 
dom and  responsibility.  The  vineyard  is  in  our  hands 
and  we  can  do  as  we  please  with  it  so  long  as  it  remains 
with  us.  We  may  cultivate  it  thoroughly  and  make  it 
bring  forth  abundantly,  or  we  may  neglect  it  and  let  it 
grow  up  to  weeds  and  unfruitfulness. 

In  this  freedom  lies  the  secret  of  largest  possibilities 
for  our  life.  God  might  have  made  us  mere  machines, 
doing  his  will  from  necessity.  He  might  have  made  us 
mere  animals,  creatures  of  instinct,  capable  of  nothing 
but  to  look  on  while  he  wrought  out  every  change  by 
the  direct  action  of  his  own  power.  But  had  he  done 
so,  the  infinite  possibilities  of  the  divine  life  would  not 
have  been  ours. 

We  are  free,  and  our  freedom  is  the  ground  of  our 
duty.  For  this  very  cause  we  should  be  diligent,  earnest, 
faithful.  The  slave  has  no  duty,  no  responsibility,  be- 
cause he  has  no  liberty  of  action  and  no  hope  of  attain- 
ment. Our  liberty  is  complete,  our  hope  boundless; 
therefore  God  may  justly  look  to  us  for  the  fruits  of 
attainment  and  service. 

Thus  far  the  reflection  is  clear  enough.  Thus  far  we 
can  see  that  Jesus  spoke  of  us.  We  all  doubtless  recog- 
nize the  fact  that  we  are  husbandmen  in  the  Lord's 
vineyard,  in  duty  bound  to  cultivate  it  faithfully  and  to 
render  to  him  the  fruits.  But  how  about  the  next  point  ? 
Can  that  have  any  bearing  upon  our  lives?  The  rejected 
messengers,  who  are  they?  Surely  we  have  never  ill- 
treated  the  Lord's  prophets.  We  have  never  stoned  or 
slain  them.    Have  we  not?    Think  a  moment. 

400 


THE    WICKED    HUSBANDMEN 

How  long  is  it  since  Love  joy,  a  prophet  of  the  anti- 
slavery  movement,  was  slain  in  the  streets  of  an  Amer- 
ican city,  and  many  others  bearing  the  same  message 
were  hooted  and  mobbed?  Has  not  more  than  one 
active  temperance  reformer  shared  the  same  fate?  Are 
not  many  earnest  social  reformers  sneered  at  and  boy- 
cotted by  even  nominally  Christian  people? 

But  these  are  public  and  national.  What  of  the  per- 
sonal? Have  you  never  refused  to  listen  when  some 
one  pointed  out  to  you  an  unwelcome  duty?  Have  you 
never  slain  a  friendship  because  the  friend  was  too 
frank  in  speaking  of  your  failings  or  of  your  responsibili- 
ties? Have  you  never  cast  stones  of  slander  or  ridicule 
at  one  who  presumed  to  demand  of  you  the  fruit  of 
positive  service  or  of  personal  devotion? 

We  are  not  talking  just  now  of  matters  purely  relig- 
ious. These  servants  of  the  householder  do  not  all 
wear  black  coats  and  white  ties.  They  come  to  us  in 
many  forms,  but  we  have  no  doubt  as  to  their  commis- 
sion. Wherever  one  reveals  to  you  an  opportunity  to 
do  good  or  offers  to  you  the  chance  to  take  an  advance 
step  in  your  life,  wherever  one  points  to  a  wrong  which 
you  can  help  to  right  or  an  evil  which  you  can  help  to 
remove,  wherever  one  shows  a  service  that  you  can  ren- 
der or  a  truth  that  you  can  champion,  there  is  a  servant 
of  the  householder  come  to  receive  the  fruit  of  his 
vineyard. 

Are  not  such  messengers  coming  to  us  daily?  And 
are  we  not  daily  rejecting  them,  some  with  mere  in- 
difference, others  violently  and  with  murderous  hatred? 
Do  we  not  slam  the  door  in  the  face  of  many  an  oppor- 
tunity and  say  to  many  a  suggestion  of  duty,  "Begone !"? 
Oh,  yes;  I  think  the  lines  in  this  part  of  the  picture  are 
coming  out  quite  clearly. 

What  about  that  one  who  asked  you  to  contribute  a 
little  of  your  spare  money  to  a  good  cause?  You 
snubbed  him  and  sent  him  empty  away,  although  you 

401 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

might  have  given  it  easily ;  and  you  know  that  you  ought 
to  have  given  it.  What  about  the  committee  that  re- 
quested you  to  take  a  thankless  public  office,  and  you 
refused  with  a  contemptuous  remark  concerning  the 
corruption  of  politics?  You  could  have  done  much  for 
the  community  had  you  been  willing  to  undertake  the 
work.  What  about  that  woman  who  asked  you  to  use 
your  influence  against  a  great  wrong  which  you  might 
have  helped  to  overcome?  You  told  her  that  you  were 
no  more  responsible  than  many  others,  and  sent  her 
away  discouraged.  All  these  and  many  others  were  ser- 
vants of  the  householder,  and  you  treated  them  shame- 
fully. 

The  last  resort  is  always  the  Son.  To  every  one 
come  these  inferior  messengers,  and  we  treat  them  as 
we  have  seen.  To  every  one  also  comes  the  Christ,  at 
some  time  or  other  comes  the  perfect  representative  of 
the  Father,  comes  with  full  authority  and  power. 

The  servants  embody  specific  and  partial  require- 
ments. They  speak  to  us  of  special  duties  to  be  done, 
special  opportunities  to  be  improved.  The  Christ  rep- 
resents the  completeness  of  duty,  the  perfection  of  ser- 
vice. Who  responds  to  his  demand  renders  the  en- 
tire fruitage  of  the  vineyard.  The  Christ  stands  for 
entire  self-surrender  to  the  will  of  God.  That  is  the 
essence  of  his  life.  It  is  the  pith  of  his  gospel.  "My 
meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me,"  is  his  own 
declaration.  And  in  the  extreme  test  of  the  Gethsemane 
trial  he  cries,  "Not  my  will,  but  thine,  be  done." 

The  same  is  the  crucial  test  of  discipleship,  entire  self- 
surrender  to  the  will  of  God.  We  of  to-day  are  no  more 
willing  to  make  such  surrender  than  were  the  chief 
priests  and  elders  of  our  Lord's  day.  Ready  enough  we 
are  to  make  sacrifices,  to  endure  persecutions,  to  under- 
take the  most  burdensome  tasks  and  duties  and  to  go  on 
the  most  disagreeable  missions,  if  in  doing  these  we  can 
only   retain  our   self-will.     We   welcome   penances,   we 

402 


THE    WICKED    HUSBANDMEN 

delight  in  beneficence,  we  court  martyrdom.  But  sur- 
render our  self-will?    Never! 

For  this  we  slay  the  Son  and  cast  him  out,  saying, 
"The  inheritance  shall  be  ours."  We  will  save  the  world ; 
we  will  work  and  strive;  we  will  even  make  untold  sac- 
rifices for  the  elevation  of  men  and  for  the  relief  of  the 
suffering;  we  will  give  and  toil  and  suffer;  only  let  us 
do  it  in  our  own  way ;  let  us  preserve  our  independence ; 
let  us  be  guided  by  our  own  wisdom  and  measured  by 
our  own  standards.  So  even  the  Church  many  times  be- 
comes merely  an  instrument  of  human  reforms  and 
benevolences,  instead  of  being  an  instrument  in  the  hands 
of  God  for  the  accomplishment  of  his  work.  We  often 
preach  a  gospel  of  worldly  wisdom,  and  our  prayers 
say  in  effect,  "My  will,  not  thine,  be  done." 

In  the  parable  of  The  Two  Sons  which  immediately 
precedes  the  one  we  are  studying,  Jesus  had  brought  out 
the  great  truth  that  righteousness  is  obedience  to  the 
will  of  God.  Its  design  is  to  show  the  utter  worthless- 
ness  of  even  the  most  pleasing  life  that  is  not  fashioned 
by  an  honest  effort  to  obey  the  commands  of  the  heavenly 
Father. 

In  the  present  parable  the  thought  is  carried  a  step 
farther.  Self-will  is  the  essence  of  all  sin,  and  leads  to 
inevitable  destruction.  The  parable  concludes  with  the 
words,  "What  therefore  will  the  lord  of  the  vineyard 
do?  he  will  come  and  destroy  the  husbandmen,  and 
will  give  the  vineyard  unto  others."  According  to  the 
evangelist  Matthew,  this  answer  to  the  Lord's  question 
is  spoken  by  his  hearers ;  and  that  is  most  natural.  Does 
not  every  reader  pronounce  the  same  judgment  upon  the 
husbandmen  of  the  story?  Furthermore,  is  not  that  the 
inevitable  result  of  the  conduct  which  the  story  repre- 
sents? Just  judgment  is  instinctive  because  it  harmo- 
nizes with  the  universal  laws  of  God.  Self-will  is  inevi- 
table self-destruction.  Disobedience  to  the  will  of  God 
works  out  its  own  penalty,  first  in  loss  of  opportunity,  and 

403 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

afterwards  in  loss  of  vital  power.  We  are  our  own 
judges.  Ourselves  execute  the  law  and  inflict  the  penalty. 
Safety  and  progress  are  in  complete  and  willing  self- 
surrender  to  the  will  of  God. 

We  turn  back  the  pages  of  history,  and  read  the  story 
of  Jewish  rebellion  and  sin,  and  we  wonder  at  the  blind 
and  wilful  obstinacy  of  that  ancient  people.  We  readily 
persuade  ourselves  that  they  were  peculiar  in  their  per- 
versity, and  that  the  age  of  such  blindness  is  long  past. 
We  are  sure  that  no  one  would  be  guilty  of  like  ingrati- 
tude and  rebellion  to-day.  In  point  of  fact,  however,  the 
lesson  of  this  parable  is  no  less  pertinent  to  the  American 
life  of  the  twentieth  century  than  to  the  Jewish  life  of 
our  Lord's  time  and  in  the  centuries  preceding.  The 
same  spirit  of  self-will  prevails  now  as  then.  Doubtless 
its  outward  manifestation  has  changed,  is  continually 
changing,  but  the  spirit  remains  the  same  and  works  out 
the  same  fatal  results. 

It  is  a  mere  truism  to  say  that  the  present  is  an  ex- 
ceedingly self-sufficient  age.  Never  was  a  time  when 
men  felt  greater  confidence  in  their  own  ability  to  solve 
all  great  problems  and  to  meet  all  emergencies,,  never  a 
time  when  they  were  more  impatient  of  control  or  sub- 
ordination. To  be  sure,  there  is  little  positive  atheism 
or  outspoken  ungodliness.  The  age  is  too  intelligent  for 
that.  But  our  very  Christianity  is  wanting  in  the  spirit 
of  obedience  and  self-surrender.  We  are  Christians  in 
belief  and  in  outward  forms  of  worship.  But  too  often 
even  our  Christian  standards  are  the  expression  of  human 
wisdom  rather  than  of  the  divine  will.  Too  often  we 
ask  regarding  any  custom  or  course  of  conduct,  What 
is  expedient?  or,  What  is  popular?  rather  than,  What  is 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  ? 

Modern  systems  of  reform,  modern  standards  of 
ethics,  modern  ideals  of  society  and  politics,  are  based 
chiefly  upon  various  systems  of  unchristian  philosophy. 
Men  wise  in  their  own  conceits  propound  schemes  of 

404 


THE     WICKED      HUSBANDMEN 

progress  that  seem  to  promise  better  things  than  the 
simple  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  Christian  world 
goes  wild  over  them.  We  are  fond  of  talking  about  the 
problems  of  our  time.  There  are  the  various  social 
and  financial  problems,  political  problems,  religious  prob- 
lems. How  shall  we  solve  them?  Apply  the  principles 
of  the  gospel,  and  follow  them  wherever  they  may  lead? 
To  many  that  does  not  seem  practical.  The  "Golden 
Rule,"  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  these  are  looked  upon 
as  beautiful  ideals  for  the  pulpit  and  the  prayer-meeting, 
but  most  of  us  do  not  think  of  them  as  practical  laws 
for  every-day  living,  for  society  and  trade  and  legisla- 
tion. So  we  work  out  laws  and  systems  of  our  own  on 
the  lines  of  compromise,  expediency,  philosophy  and 
what  not.  Result,  disaster  and  confusion  worse  con- 
founded. 

To-day  the  Almighty  is  sending  his  messengers  to  the 
Christian  people  of  America  demanding  the  fruits  of  his 
vineyard.  He  is  calling  for  fruits  of  godly  citizenship, 
fruits  of  missionary  endeavor,  fruits  of  Christian  states- 
manship and  leadership  among  the  nations  of  the  world. 
It  is  not  enough  that  we  lead  the  world  in  enlightenment 
and  invention  and  wealth,  not  enough  that  we  surpass 
all  others  in  intellectual  power  and  commercial  greatness. 
What  of  the  spiritual  life  of  our  people?  What  of  our 
influence  upon  the  millions  who  seek  a  refuge  on  our 
shores  ?  What  of  the  effort  to  spread  the  gospel  of  Christ 
and  the  kingdom  of  God  among  the  nations  of  the  earth  ? 
God  rightly  expects  much  in  these  directions  from  us. 
If  we  fail  to  fulfil  his  just  requirements,  shall  it  not  be 
with  us  as  with  Israel  of  old?  If  we  send  our  armies 
to  civilize  nations  with  the  sword,  if  in  a  spirit  of 
crass  materialism  we  say.  Trade  follows  the  flag,  and 
give  ourselves  up  to  conquest  and  expansion,  instead  of 
believing  that  trade  and  prosperity  follow  the  Bible,  is 
it  not  certain  that  we  too  shall  be  driven  forth  from  the 

405 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

vineyard,  and  other  husbandmen  brought  in  who  will 
deliver  to  the  Lord  the  fruits  in  due  season? 

The  parable  is  fraught  with  solemn  and  practical  sug- 
gestion. If  as  a  Christian  people  we  heed  its  message, 
then  shall  we  find  our  own  growth  and  immortality  se- 
cured through  earnest  consecration  to  the  great  work 
to  which  God  has  appointed  us. 


403 


The  Law  of  Spiritual 
Reaction 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

The  Law  of  Spiritual 
Reaction 

THE   TWO   DEBTORS 

Luke  7:36-50 

TQxt.—*'tVhich  of  them  therefore  ivilllo'ue  him  most?  "—Luke  7:42 

THE  law  of  action  and  reaction  is  absolutely 
impartial.  It  is  also  universal.  Our  early 
studies  in  mechanics  taught  us  that  "Ac- 
tion and  reaction  are  always  precisely  equal 
and  opposite  in  direction" ;  but  we  thought 
of  the  law  as  applying  only  to  material  things  and  to 
physical  forces.  Wider  observation  discovers  the  same 
law  working  with  no  less  certainty  and  effectiveness  in 
the  realms  of  mind  and  spirit.  "A  law  of  nature,"  we 
say.  Yes,  and  by  the  same  token,  a  law  of  the  kingdom 
of  God. 

The  blacksmith  with  all  the  strength  of  his  brawny 
arm  brings  down  his  hammer  with  a  ringing  blow  upon 
the  anvil.  The  anvil  returns  the  blow  with  equal  force 
upon  the  hammer.  I  hurl  a  stone  into  the  air  and  the 
earth  draws  it  downwards  by  the  force  of  gravity.  By 
the  same  force  of  gravity  and  with  exactly  equal  strength 
the  stone  draws  the  earth  towards  itself.  And  these,  that 
we  call  the  observed  facts  of  nature,  are  but  types  of 
what  is  going  on  in  every  sphere  of  life  from  the  most 
grossly  material  to  the  most  subtly  spiritual. 

A  great  preacher  has  spoken  of  "The  profound  re- 
sponsiveness of  life."     "How  clear  they  are,"  he  says, 

409 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

"and  how  they  call  and  answer  each  other — ^the  world 
and  man!"  And  he  goes  on  to  illustrate  the  wonderful 
adaptation  and  balance  between  human  powers  and  facul- 
ties and  the  conditions  by  which  man  is  surrounded,  the 
challenge  of  mystery  to  mind,  of  hardship  to  strength, 
of  difficulty  to  enthusiasm  and  earnestness  of  purpose. 

Change  the  relation.  Let  it  be  not  the  world  and  man 
but  God  and  man,,  and  you  still  find  the  same  responsive- 
ness. There  is  the  call  of  the  divine  Spirit  and  the  re- 
sponse of  the  human  soul.  There  is  the  aspiration  of 
man's  heart  and  the  ready  answer  of  God's  love.  Be- 
tween these  there  is  the  same  absolute  equality,  the  same 
sure  and  perfect  balance  that  we  observe  in  the  play  of 
gravity. 

In  all  the  myriad  phases  of  spiritual  experience  or  the 
most  subtle  shadings  of  moral  character  you  cannot  find 
a  solitary  illustration  of  caprice  or  uncertainty.  Theo- 
logians once  delighted  to  speak  of  God  as  bestowing  his 
favors  not  because  of  any  conditions  foreseen  or  observed 
in  the  recipient,  but  merely  "for  his  own  good  pleasure." 
Modern  intelligence  has  forever  dethroned  this  deifica- 
tion of  an  Oriental  tyrant  and  offers  its  worship  only  to 
a  just  and  impartial  Divinity  who  works  in  accordance 
with  clearly  defined  laws  and  for  assignable  reasons.  We 
have  learned  that  law  is  diviner  than  license  and  cer- 
tainty more  godlike  than  caprice,  and  following  out  the 
truth  thus  suggested  we  are  beginning  to  discover  the 
fact  that  moral  growth  and  spiritual  experiences  are  al- 
ways to  be  exactly  measured  by  the  real  desire  in  the 
heart.  On  the  one  hand,  God  does  not  bestow  his  gifts 
unsought;  and  on  the  other,  no  faintest  breath  of  true 
desire  ever  fails  to  reach  the  heavenly  Father's  ear  or  to 
receive  an  adequate  reply. 

We  have  been  slow  to  grasp  this  message  and  to  teach 
it  to  others ;  nevertheless  it  is  the  very  message  that  Jesus 
published  in  the  streets  of  Jerusalem  and  among  the  vil- 
lages of  Judea  and  Galilee.    It  is  the  essential  truth  that 

410 


THE     TWO      DEBTORS 

he  has  embodied  in  the  parable  of  The  Two  Debtors. 
Let  us  see. 

The  parable  is  brief  and  unadorned,  the  simplest 
statement  of  facts.  "A  certain  lender,"  says  the  Master, 
"had  two  debtors :  the  one  owed  him  five  hundred  pence, 
and  the  other  fifty.  When  they  had  not  wherewith  to 
pay,  he  frankly  forgave  them  both."  There  is  the  whole 
story.  You  see  it  is  incomplete  and,  taken  in  itself, 
meaningless.  We  must  have  the  setting  if  we  are  to  get 
an  interpretation.  Put  in  the  background  and  the  story 
will  glisten  with  truth.    Here  you  have  it. 

A  Pharisee  named  Simon  invites  Jesus  to  dine  with 
him.  He  is  more  patronizing  than  polite,,  more  curious 
than  courteous;  yet  Jesus  accepts  his  overture  and  wel- 
comes the  opportunity  for  religious  conversation.  As 
they  recline  at  table  not  a  few  persons  take  the  Oriental 
privilege  of  coming  in,  though  uninvited,  to  stand  or  sit 
about  the  outer  walls  of  the  room  and  listen  to  the  con- 
versation of  the  distinguished  company.  Among  these 
comes  a  woman  who  has  borne  an  ill  name  in  the  city, 
and  doubtless  justly  enough,  but  who  has  apparently  re- 
pented of  her  life  of  sin  and,  touched  by  some  former 
kindness  of  the  Master,  has  forsaken  her  evil  ways. 

As  a  token  of  her  gratitude  she  has  brought  a  box  of 
costly  ointment  with  which  to  anoint  her  Saviour;  but 
when  she  approaches  the  foot  of  his  couch  she  is  over- 
whelmed with  emotion  and  bursts  into  tears,  washing  his 
feet  with  her  tears  and  wiping  them  with  her  hair.  Only 
then  can  she  pour  out  upon  him  her  rich  and  fragrant 
gift. 

Simon  is  scandalized  that  such  a  person  should  enter 
his  house,  and  yet  more  that  Jesus  should  not  at  once 
perceive  her  character  and  scornfully  reject  her  tribute 
of  love.  "This  man  if  he  were  a  prophet,"  says  Simon  to 
himself,  "would  have  perceived  who  and  what  manner 
of  woman  this  is  that  toucheth  him,  that  she  is  a  sinner." 

Simon  himself  is  no  prophet,  consequently  he  sees  only 

411 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF    JESUS 

what  any  man  could  see — the  tokens  of  sin  in  the 
woman's  countenance.  Jesus  sees  more  than  he.  He 
sees  a  sinner  repentant,  forgiven,  redeemed.  With  more 
than  a  prophet's  insight  he  sees  the  beginnings  of  a  new 
and  holy  life  where  others  can  see  naught  but  the  foot- 
prints of  evil.  Not  only  so,  but  he  also  perceives  the 
movement  of  Simon's  mind.  He  hears  the  unspoken 
words.  He  catches  the  critical  and  contemptuous 
thought.  And  quietly  he  proceeds  to  expose  and  rebuke 
them. 

First  he  utters  the  simple  parable  of  The  Two  Debt- 
ors. Then  he  puts  to  Simon  a  direct  question:  "Which 
of  the  two  will  love  his  creditor  most  because  of  this 
forgiveness?"  To  this  question  Simon  replies  with  more 
frankness  than  precision,  "He,  I  suppose,  to  whom  he 
forgave  the  most."  From  the  truth  contained  in  this  an- 
swer Jesus  draws  an  inference  regarding  Simon  and  the 
woman.  He  marks  the  contrast  between  the  less  than 
scant  politeness  of  the  Pharisee  and  the  humble  and 
eager  affection  of  the  despised  sinner.  On  the  one  hand, 
no  water  for  his  feet,  no  ointment  for  his  head,  no  kiss 
of  greeting  as  he  entered ;  on  the  other,  the  bathing  of  his 
feet  with  tears  and  drying  them  with  her  hair,  the  anoint- 
ing of  feet  rather  than  head  indicating  the  profound 
humility  of  her  spirit,  and  even  the  eager  kiss  repeated 
again  and  again  in  token  of  her  love.  What  is  the  con- 
clusion? What  could  it  be  but  this? — "I  say  unto  thee, 
Her  sins,  which  are  many,  are  forgiven;  for  she  loved 
much." 

Just  a  word  regarding  the  last  clause.  Do  not  mis- 
understand the  argument.  Jesus  does  not  here  say,  "She 
is  forgiven  because  she  loved  much,"  but  rather,  if  I 
rightly  interpret  his  words,  "I  say  unto  thee,  Her  sins, 
which  are  many,  are  forgiven  as  is  indicated  by  the 
greatness  of  her  love."  In  other  words,  this  excessive 
manifestation  of  her  love  is  not  the  ground  of  her  for- 
giveness, but  it  is  the  ground  of  his  declaration,  since  one 

412 


THE      TWO       DEBTORS 

who  had  little  sense  of  forgiveness  would  not  manifest 
such  great  love. 

Jesus  then  turns  to  the  woman  and  reassures  her  with 
the  declaration,  "Thy  sins  are  forgiven,"  and  when  those 
present  express  amazement  he  adds,  "Thy  faith  hath 
saved  thee ;  go  in  peace."  Not  that  the  woman  was  not 
already  conscious  that  she  was  forgiven,  but  that  her 
consciousness  needed  confirmation  in  the  presence  of  un- 
belief and  scorn. 

The  application  of  this  parable  to  Simon  himself  is 
unavoidable  in  view  of  our  Lord's  unfoldment  of  it. 
Since,  by  the  Pharisee's  own  acknowledgment,  love  is 
proportioned  to  the  sense  of  forgiveness,  we  may  justly 
measure  the  sense  of  forgiveness  by  the  revelation  of 
love.  Simon  had  manifested  no  love  at  all.  His  spirit 
had  been  that  of  condescending  patronage.  He  had 
neglected  the  most  common  acts  of  courtesy.  Clearly, 
therefore,  he  had  no  consciousness  of  either  the  need  or 
the  fact  of  forgiveness.  By  contrast,  the  overflowing 
love  of  this  poor  woman  as  clearly  argued  both  the  sense 
of  need  and  the  joyful  consciousness  of  the  fact. 

In  all  that  is  said,  no  accusation  of  sin  is  made  against 
Simon,  nor  is  there  any  attempt  to  belittle  the  sinfulness 
of  the  woman.  Jesus  plainly  declares  to  her  the  truth, 
"Thy  sins,  ivhich  are  many,"  yet  the  Pharisee  makes  a 
poor  showing  in  the  light  of  the  contrast,  and  he  must 
have  been  extremely  thick-skinned  and  self-satisfied  if 
his  conscience  did  not  suggest  to  him  the  possibility  that 
he  too  needed  forgiveness.  His  life  had  been  immeasur- 
ably more  clean  and  pure  and  respectable  than  the  life 
of  this  outcast,  but  it  had  been  a  loveless  life.  There  had 
been  nothing  in  his  religion  to  stir  the  feelings  and  kindle 
the  emotions,  while  she,  out  of  the  very  depths  of  vile- 
ness,  had  been  lifted  to  an  ecstasy  of  joy  and  blessing. 
That  was  indeed  a  time  for  deep  and  thorough  heart 
searching  on  the  part  of  Simon. 

Let  us  leave  him  to  his  task,  while  we  ask,  What  has 

413 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

this  compound  parable  for  us? — "this  compound  par- 
able," I  say ;  for  the  incident  taken  as  a  whole  is  really 
a  parable  within  a  parable.  The  parable  of  Jesus  is  but 
one  element  in  the  larger  parable  of  the  gospel.  True, 
the  little  story  told  by  the  Master  is  the  kernel,  but  we 
must  break  through  the  shell  before  we  can  come  at  it. 
In  other  words,  we  must  discover  the  bearing  of  the  par- 
able by  taking  it  in  connection  with  the  incident  as  a 
whole. 

In  the  larger  parable  we  have  the  vivid  contrast  be- 
tween a  respected  Pharisee  and  a  despised  and  degraded 
woman.  It  is  a  contrast  between  respectability  and 
shame.  That  is  unquestionable.  Simon  flatters  himself 
that  it  is  equally  a  contrast  between  righteousness  and 
sin;  and  Jesus  does  not  directly  dispute  this  assumption. 
On  the  contrary,  he  practically  grants  its  truth  for  the 
sake  of  the  deeper  lesson  which  he  desires  to  teach. 

In  the  hypothetical  case  sketched  in  the  parable  there 
is  a  real  contrast  between  two  debtors,  one  of  whom  owes 
five  hundred  pence  while  the  other  owes  but  fifty,  though 
both  are  insolvent  and  both  are  freely  released  from  their 
indebtedness.  It  is  as  though  Jesus  had  said,  "Simon, 
I  recognize  the  vast  moral  difference  between  yourself 
and  this  woman.  Your  life  has  been  far  more  pure  and 
pleasing  than  hers,  and  it  may  be  that  your  debt  to  God 
on  that  score  is  less  than  hers ;  but  God  is  ready  to  for- 
give you  both  with  equal  freedom.  Now  this  woman's 
spirit  and  conduct  indicate  that  she  is  already  forgiven 
of  God,  though  not  of  society,  while  your  manner  im- 
plies that  you  have  neither  sought  nor  received  for- 
giveness." 

Enough,  then,  of  Simon  and  the  outcast  woman  whom 
we  are  not  concerned  to  identify,  nor  even  to  consider 
further.  They  have  played  their  full  part  in  the  drama 
before  us.  Turn  now  to  the  wider  scope  of  the  story  in 
its  universal  application.  It  is  a  parable  of  the  relation 
of  forgiveness  and  love,  of  the  mutual  responsiveness  of 

414 


THE       TWO       DEBTORS 

God  and  man,  of  spiritual  action  and  reaction.  It  un- 
folds a  general  law  that  has  a  vital  bearing  upon  the 
spiritual  life.    Briefly  that  law  may  be  stated  thus : — 

A  man's  love  for  God  will  invariably  be  commensurate 
with  his  sense  of  divine  forgiveness. 

Mark  the  words,  "his  sense  of  forgiveness."  I  think 
you  will  agree  with  me  that  the  difference  between  fifty 
and  five  hundred  pence  represents  the  sense  of  indebted- 
ness rather  than  the  exact  and  literal  measure  of  in- 
debtedness. Simon's  reply  to  our  Lord,  though  true 
enough  for  the  occasion,  was  short-sighted  and  super- 
ficial; and  I  fancy  that  Jesus  accepted  it  simply  because 
it  was  sufficiently  correct  for  his  immediate  purpose.  A 
more  thoughtful  man  would  have  taken  into  account  not 
only  the  difference  in  the  sums  owed,  but  also  the  possi- 
ble diversity  in  the  men.  A  debt  of  fifty  pence  will 
weigh  more  heavily  upon  one  man's  mind  than  will  a 
debt  of  five  hundred  pence  upon  another's.  The  feeling 
of  gratitude  and  love  will  depend  rather  upon  the  moral 
pressure  of  the  debt  than  upon  its  precise  amount.  He 
who  feels  his  debt  most  sorely,  whether  the  debt  be  great 
or  small,  will  love  most  when  forgiven. 

As  in  the  commercial  so  also  in  the  spiritual  realm, 
the  sense  of  indebtedness  is  often  wholly  dispropor- 
tioned  to  the  amount  of  the  debt.  There  are  doubtless 
great  differences  of  moral  character  among  men.  There 
are  saints  and  sinners.  There  are  good  men  and  bad 
men.  But  many  times,  the  difference  is  more  in  seeming 
than  in  reality.  Much  that  passes  for  righteousness  is 
mere  respectability;  and  what  we  call  sin  is  sometimes 
nothing  more  than  a  disregard  of  artificial  social  stand- 
ards. St.  Paul's  declaration,  "There  is  no  difference,  for 
all  have  sinned,"  has  been  wofully  distorted  and  mis- 
applied by  many  Christian  workers  and  teachers ;  never- 
theless it  expresses  a  great  truth.  Notwithstanding  the 
contrast  of  outward  appearance,  the  Pharisee  and  the 

415 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

outcast  are  sometimes  more  closely  allied  in  character 
than  they  think. 

We  are  prone  to  compare  ourselves  with  our  fellows, 
and  to  estimate  our  comparative  moral  or  spiritual  in- 
debtedness by  the  observed  difference;  a  difference,  by 
the  way,  that  is  invariably  in  our  own  favor.  The  readi- 
ness with  which  every  man  can  discover  others  worse 
than  himself  is  truly  astounding.  The  Pharisee  spirit  is 
not  confined  to  one  class.  It  is  not  even  limited  to  the  re- 
spectable classes.  The  outcast,  until  touched  by  the  pow- 
er of  divine  love,  will  point  the  finger  of  scorn  at  some 
worse  sinner. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  this  habit  of  comparison 
always  tends  to  belittle  the  sense  of  personal  sin.  He 
will  not  feel  any  heavy  burden  of  moral  debt,  who  is 
forever  reminding  himself  that  his  neighbors  owe  more 
than  he  does.  Consequently,  multitudes  who  are  recog- 
nized by  the  world  at  large  as  sinners  and  degraded  out- 
casts,, feel  on  their  own  part  no  pressure  of  indebtedness 
to  God,  nor  any  gratitude  for  the  divine  forgiveness. 

On  the  other  hand,  some  who  have  been  canonized  as 
saints  by  their  fellow  men  have  felt  very  deeply  this  sense 
of  indebtedness  to  God.  Listen  to  the  apostle  Paul, 
as  he  declares,  even  as  he  nears  the  end  of  his  wonderful 
life  of  holiness  and  self-sacrifice,  "Faithful  is  the  saying, 
and  worthy  of  all  acceptation,  that  Christ  Jesus  came  into 
the  world  to  save  sinners;  of  whom  I  am  chief."  Hy- 
perbole !  exaggeration !  you  say.  Not  at  all.  It  is 
but  the  honest  expression  of  a  profound  sense  of  sinful- 
ness that  had  grown  in  the  mind  and  heart  of  that  noble 
man  through  all  the  years  of  his  service.  As  he  became 
more  perfectly  acquainted  with  the  character  of  Christ 
and  the  holiness  of  God,  he  realized  ever  more  clearly 
how  great  were  his  own  shortcomings,  and  he  knew 
that  it  was  no  figure  of  speech  but  a  literal  truth,  that, 
from  his  own  point  of  view  at  least  and  in  so  far  as  con- 
cerned his  own  life,  he  was  the  chief  of  sinners. 

416 


THE      TWO      DEBTORS 

With  the  growth  of  this  sense  of  personal  sinfulness 
there  was  a  corresponding  growth  of  the  sense  of  divine 
forgiveness,  producing  its  reaction  of  love  and  devoted 
effort.  So  Paul,  the  chief  of  sinners,,  because  he  felt 
himself  to  be  such,  became  the  chief  of  apostles,  the 
most  fruitful  worker  in  the  primitive  Church,  the  disciple 
of  profoundest  and  most  varied  spiritual  experience. 

Always  the  spiritual  life  depends  for  its  development 
upon  this  interplay  of  spiritual  reactions.  Growing  out 
of  a  clear  sense  of  sin  is  the  desire  for  forgiveness. 
The  reaction  of  the  desire  is  the  glad  consciousness  that 
God  does  forgive  our  sins;  and  this  consciousness  in  its 
turn  calls  forth  the  response  of  love  and  gratitude  from 
the  soul.  Love  expressing  itself  in  service  and  sacrifice 
is  answered  by  further  enduements  of  grace,  and  thus 
the  process  continues  without  end. 

Doubtless  there  have  been  individual  instances — yes, 
more,  there  have  been  distinct  periods  in  the  history  of 
the  Christian  Church — when  the  sense  of  sin  has  been 
emphasized  in  an  artificial  manner  and  to  an  unreason- 
able degree,  and  the  results  have  not  been  the  best.  As 
might  be  expected,  such  ideals  have  given  rise  to  a  mor- 
bid and  unreal  piety  and  to  spiritual  experiences,  so 
called,  that  have  been  of  more  than  doubtful  value. 

Such,  however,  is  not  the  danger  of  the  present  era. 
On  the  contrary,  we  are  now  living  in  one  of  those  peri- 
ods when  the  common  Christian  life  is  rendered  shallow 
because  of  our  trifling  and  inadequate  notions  of  sin. 
We  have  come  to  look  at  evil  so  largely  from  a  scientific 
standpoint,  we  have  talked  so  long  and  so  persistently 
about  environment  and  heredity,  that  the  moral  aspect 
of  the  matter  is  often  overlooked.  In  fact,  we  are  not 
half  sure  that  evil  is  really  evil  at  all.  Perhaps  it  is  only 
"good  in  the  making."  The  natural  history  of  evil,  the 
social  and  other  problems  to  which  it  gives  rise,  its  phys- 
iology and  psychology  we  understand  quite  clearly ;  but 
of  evil  as  sin  against  God,  as  a  grievous  debt  to  be  for- 

417 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

given,  blotted  out  by  the  power  of  the  divine  Saviour — 
of  that  we  know  Httle. 

What  wonder,  then,  if  the  religion  of  to-day  is  shorn 
of  deep  spiritual  experience  ?  What  wonder  if  the  sense 
of  forgiveness  is  rare,,  and  love  to  God  is  weak?  The 
process  is  simple  and  inevitable.  Who  fails  to  apprehend 
the  reality  of  sin  cares  little  about  forgiveness,  and  to 
whom  little  is  forgiven,  the  same  loveth  little. 

The  parable  makes  its  direct  appeal  to  every  soul.  It 
is  "deep  calling  unto  deep,"  the  deep  things  of  God  call- 
ing unto  the  deep  and  earnest  thought  of  his  child,  a 
challenge  to  thoroughness  and  care  in  the  cultivation 
of  the  spiritual  life. 

Would  you  know  the  possibilities  of  the  Christian 
experience,  the  greatness  of  Christian  joy  and  freedom? 
You  must  first  realize  your  sin  and  need  of  forgiveness. 
Cease  to  compare  your  life  with  the  lives  of  others 
about  you,  and  bring  it  fearlessly  under  the  searching 
light  of  divine  truth.  Study  the  perfect  life  of  the  Christ. 
Let  that  life  be  the  one  standard  of  measurement  and 
comparison.  Let  the  glory  and  the  radiance  of  Calvary's 
cross  stream  upon  it.  And  when,  in  the  clear  light  of 
divinest  love,  you  have  caught  a  glimpse  of  your  meas- 
ureless indebtedness  to  God,  you  will  throw  yourself 
in  humility  and  self-condemnation  at  his  feet,  confessing 
yourself  the  chief  of  sinners,  and  there  will  flow  into  your 
soul  a  tide  of  peace  and  joy  and  love  hitherto  unknown. 


418 


Neighborhood 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

Neighborhood 

THE   GOOD   SAMARITAN 

Luke  10:30-37 

Text.— "ffAo  is  my  neighbor?''— Im\x  10:29 

SOME  questions  are  best  answered  when  they  are 
not  answered  at  all.  Some  questions  can  only 
be  so  answered.  The  very  attempt  to  answer 
them  is  suicidal.  It  is  like  the  effort  to  meas- 
ure love,  or  to  discover  the  essence  of  life  by 
dissection.  The  process  of  measurement  or  investigation 
itself  destroys  its  object  just  as  we  are  about  to  grasp  it. 
Do  you  sometimes  wonder  why  Jesus  evaded  certain 
questions  that  were  put  to  him  in  all  earnestness  and 
sincerity?  It  was  that  by  evasion  he  might  make  very 
clear  the  truth  that  a  direct  answer  or  attempted  answer 
would  obscure.    Take  one  or  two  illustrations. 

Disciples  ask,  "Lord,  are  there  few  that  be  saved?" 
What  says  the  Master?  "Strive  to  enter  in  at  the  strait 
gate."  That  was  not  an  answer.  It  was  an  evasion. 
Do  not  say,  however,  that  the  words  were  a  mere  reproof 
of  unjustifiable  curiosity.  Not  at  all.  Though  an  eva- 
sion, the  words  contain  the  kernel  of  the  answer,  the 
onlv  truthful  answer.    Think  a  moment. 

The  number  of  the  saved  depends  upon  the  number 
and  earnestness  of  those  who  strive  for  salvation.  It 
is  not  a  fixed  number  arbitrarily  determined  by  "the 

421 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

counsel  and  foreknowledge  of  God,"  as  the  theologians 
of  a  former  age  would  say.  The  divine  provision  is 
limitless,  universal.  The  only  limit  possible  is  that  which 
men  set  for  themselves.  Do  you  not  see,  therefore,  that 
if  Jesus  had  said,  "Yes,  the  saved  are  few,"  his  hearers 
might  have  been  discouraged  and  so  failed  to  put  them- 
selves among  the  number  of  the  saved?  On  the  other 
handj  had  he  said,  "Oh,  the  saved  are  numberless,"  they 
might  have  become  careless  and  so  have  neglected  their 
opportunity  to  swell  the  number.  It  is  indeed  a  strange 
paradox  that  the  proclamation  of  certain  truths  seems 
to  endanger  their  truthfulness.  The  chief  hindrance  to 
many  a  man's  salvation  to-day  is  his  fixed  belief  tliat 
everybody  will  be  saved. 

At  another  time  Peter,  with  a  sidelong  glance  at  John, 
asks,  "Lord,  and  what  shall  this  man  do?"  A  very  nat- 
ural question  and  not  wholly  impertinent  or  meddle- 
some. Yet  the  Master  replies,  "What  is  that  to  thee? 
follow  thou  me."  Another  evasion.  What  is  its  pur- 
pose? This,  is  it  not?  To  call  Peter's  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  answer  to  his  question  is  involved  in  his  own 
action.  John's  work  is  not  independent  of  Peter's.  His 
best  achievement  is  conditioned  on  his  fellow  disciple's 
faithfulness.  If  Peter  does  not  follow  the  Master,  he 
may  mislead  John  or  utterly  frustrate  his  work.  What 
this  man  shall  do,  then,  will  be  detennined  in  no  small 
degree  by  what  he  himself  shall  do  to  help  or  to  hinder 
him. 

In  the  case  directly  before  us,  a  lawyer  comes  to  Jesus 
with  the  great  test  question  of  the  gospel,  "Master,  what 
shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal  life?"  It  is  a  vital  question, 
and  receives  a  direct  and  unequivocal  answer.  The 
lawyer  is  referred  back  to  his  own  most  familiar  field 
of  life  and  thought,  the  law.  "What  is  written  in  the 
law  ?  how  readest  thou  ?"  With  ready  familiarity  the 
questioner  sums  up  the  whole  in  two  commands,  "Thou 
shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with 

423 


THE     GOOD      SAMARITAN 

all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  strength,  and  with  all  thy 
mind;  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  Taking  him  on 
this  familiar  ground,  Jesus  gives  a  direct  and  complete 
answer,  "This  do,  and  thou  shalt  live." 

Like  many  another  enquirer,  however,  the  lawyer  is 
more  ready  to  propound  problems  than  to  solve  them, 
more  eager  to  talk  than  to  act,  to  speculate  than  to  sac- 
rifice. His  question  is  answered.  Is  he  satisfied?  Does 
he  at  once  go  forth  to  carry  out  in  his  life  the  principle 
so  simply  and  clearly  announced?  No.  The  answer  to 
one  question  only  calls  forth  another:  "And  who  is  my 
neighbor  ?" 
I  To  this  question  no  answer  is  given.  When  a  man 
makes  one  question  the  stepping-stone  to  another  ques- 
tion, it  is  time  to  call  a  halt.  It  is  a  waste  of  breath 
to  answer  him,  even  though  he  fancies  himself  to  be  a 
model  of  eagerness  and  candor.  Too  often  he  is  one 
of  those  persons  who  have  been  described  as  "ever 
learning,  but  never  able  to  come  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
truth."  Honest  doubt  merits  respect ;  yet  there  is  always 
the  danger  that  its  respect  may  petrify  into  self-worship. 
Hence  it  is  well  not  to  give  it  too  much  attention. 

But  this  does  not  altogether  explain  Jesus'  evasion. 
There  is  a  second  reason  more  vital  than  this.  The 
fact  is,  no  direct  answer  could  be  given  to  the  lawyer's 
I  question  that  would  not  in  some  sense  belie  itself.  "Who 
is  my  neighbor?"  As  well  ask,  How  many  persons  make 
a  crowd?  How  much  food  will  satisfy  hunger?  How 
much  money  constitutes  wealth?  or  any  similar  question. 
The  query  betrays  a  wholly  false  conception  of  the  en- 
tire subject^  which  a  direct  answer  would  only  perpetu- 
ate. Jesus,  therefore,  does  not  attempt  to  answer  the 
question,  but  tells  a  story  instead.  And  the  story,  by 
its  very  evasion  of  the  question,  flashes  out  the  truth 
that  no  answer  could  have  conveyed. 

We  call  the  story  The  Parable  of  the  Good  Samari- 
tan.    We  have   all   of  us   read  it  hundreds   of  times. 

423 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

Let  us  read  it  once  more  that  it  may  speak  its  message 
afresh. 

Under  the  impact  of  our  thought  the  parable  falls  into 
three  sections.  It  is  a  drama  in  three  acts.  Let  us 
designate  them  for  convenience,  a.  Need.  b.  Nearness. 
c.  Neighborhood. 

The  first  act  or  scene  presents  a  picture  of  Need.  "A 
certain  man  was  going  down  from  Jerusalem  to  Jericho; 
and  he  fell  among  robbers,  who  both  stripped  him  and 
beat  him,  and  departed,  leaving  him  half  dead." 

A  picture  of  need,  I  say.  Here  is  a  man  penniless, 
helpless,  and  well-nigh  hopeless.  His  need  is  extreme. 
Now  need  is  not  neighborhood,  but  it  is  a  common,  per- 
haps an  essential  element  of  it.  Need  is  the  basis,  the 
challenge,  the  inspiration  of  neighborhood.  Where  there 
is  no  need  the  neighborly  spirit  may  exist,  but  it  must 
of  necessity  be  latent.  It  lacks  all  opportunity  for  exer- 
cise, for  manifestation.  Need,  then,  is  the  gateway  to 
neighborhood.  It  stands  at  the  opening  of  the  parable, 
and  through  it  we  must  pass  to  the  second  scene. 

Here  our  key-word  is  ''Nearness."  The  traveler  lies 
stunned  and  bleeding  by  the  wayside.  "And  by  chance 
a  certain  priest  was  going  down  that  way ;  and  when  he 
saw  him,  he  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  And  in  like 
manner  a  Levite  also,  when  he  came  to  the  place,  and 
saw  him,  passed  by  on  the  other  side.  But  a  certain 
Samaritan,  as  he  journeyed,  came  where  he  was :  and 
when  he  saw  him,  he  was  moved  with  compassion." 

Nearness  is  predicated  of  three  men  in  this  scene,  but 
only  one  of  them  realizes  the  meaning  of  neighborliness. 
What  is  the  suggestion  ?  Clearly  this :  Nearness  does 
not  in.itseli  constitute  neighborhood,  although  it  may  be 
a""'second  element  that  makes  for  neighborhood.  We 
often  use  the  term  "neighborhood"  as  meaning  a  cluster 
of  families  or  persons  in  a  small  territory.  That  is  a 
mistake.  Such  a  cluster  is  a  vicinity  or  ward ;  yet  there 
may  be  no  neighborhood  there.     Draw  your  line  never 

424 


THE     GOOD     SAMARITAN 

so  closely.  Let  it  include  but  two  persons  living  side 
by  side;  still  tliere  may  be  no  neighborhood.  There 
surely  is  none  if  in  these  two  there  is  no  spirit  of  mutual 
interest  and  care  and  helpfulness,  no  desire  to  minister 
to  one  another's  needs. 

In  our  large  cities  a  number  of  families  and  individ- 
uals often  dwell  under  the  same  roof,  separated  from 
each  other  by  thin  partition  walls,  who  yet  know  no  more 
of  one  another  and  care  no  more  for  one  another  than 
as  though  they  lived  on  opposite  sides  of  the  globe. 
Each  lives  his  own  life  and  goes  his  own  way,  priding 
himself  perhaps  that  he  never  meddles  with  the  affairs 
of  others.    There  is  nearness,  but  not  neighborhood. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  Miss  Stone  is  captured  by  brig- 
ands in  Turkey,  and  immediately  hundreds  of  anxious 
souls  in  far-off  America  exert  themselves  for  her  rescue, 
though  many  of  them  have  never  seen  her  or  even  heard 
of  her  before.  The  people  of  Cuba  are  oppressed  by  a 
cruel  master,  and  quickly  a  nation  from  across  the  water 
appears  with  armies  to  succor  them.  There  is  neighbor- 
hood without  geographical  nearness. 

I  do  not  find  in  the  construction  of  this  parable  any 
intentional  detraction  of  either  priest  or  Levite  as  the 
representative  of  his  class,  nor  any  purpose  to  laud  the 
Samaritans  as  a  people  in  contrast  with  the  Jews.  The 
characters  or  actors  are  chosen  simply  for  the  sake  of 
contrast,  and  this  contrast  is  not  a  contrast  between  men 
but  between  certain  circumstances  and  elements  which 
these  men  embody  and  which  bear  directly  upon  this 
notion  of  nearness  as  a  test  of  neighborhood.  Priest 
and  Levite  represent  in  themselves  all  that  is  commonly 
associated  with  the  idea  of  neighborhood.  They  were 
near  ones  in  every  sense.  They  were  fellow  countrymen 
of  the  distressed  traveler.  Their  nearness  was  both  geo- 
graphical and  racial.  Add  to  this  their  position  in  the 
community  as  the  recognized  custodians  of  the  public 
welfare,   leaders   in   religious   benevolence   and   charity, 

435 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

who  would  be  expected  to  feel  some  sense  of  responsi- 
bility and  to  discern  most  quickly  and  clearly  the  neigh- 
borly obligation.  The  Samaritan,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  remote  from  whatever  point  of  view  you  look  at  him. 
His  nationality  obliterates  all  geographical  and  racial 
obligations  of  neighborliness  to  the  Jew.  The  men  were 
at  the  opposite  poles  and  celestial  diameters  lay  between 
them.  Yet  the  sight  of  distress  kindles  the  neighborly 
spirit  in  spite  of  this  fact.  Can  we  escape  the  truth  that 
flashes  from  this  part  of  the  story?  Listen  to  its  mes- 
sage. 

Neighborhood  is  not  a  matter  of  geography,  but  of 
humanity.  It  is  not  a  question  of  affinity,  but  of  o^gpot; 
tuj\ity.  You  cannot  draw  lines  on  the  surface  of  the 
globe  and  say,  "Thus  far  and  no  farther  does  my  neigh- 
borly duty  extend."  Such  lines,  though  they  encircle 
the  earth,  utterly  strangle  the  neighborly  spirit.  You 
cannot  separate  the  race  by  cleavage  planes,  however 
comprehensive,  without  sundering  the  neighborly  spirit 
at  some  vital  point. 

Need  and  nearness  together  fail  to  define  neighbor- 
hood or  to  impress  its  obligation  upon  souls  that  are  not 
neighborly.  They  steel  themselves  against  the  cry  and 
pass  by  on  the  other  side.  But  to  the  neighborly  soul 
they  present  an  irresistible  appeal.  Seen  through  the 
eyes  of  the  Samaritan  they  are  the  gateways  to  a  neigh- 
borhood that  is  truly  divine. 

Turn  now  to  the  third  scene  in  the  parable,  which 
completes  its  lesson.  Here  we  have  no  definition,  it  is 
true,  but  instead  thereof  we  have  a  living  picture  of 
"Neighborhood."  Note  the  careful  detail,  the  cumulative 
description  of  the  spirit  of  neighborhood. 

The  picture  reveals  eight  distinct  elements,  like  the 
colors  of  the  prism,  which  taken  together  compose  the 
white  light  of  neighborhood.  They  are, — i.  Sympathy. 
"When  he  (the  Samaritan)  saw  him,  he  was  moved  with 
compassion."     2.  Approach.     "And  came  to  him."     3. 

426 


THE      GOOD     SAMARITAN 

Contact.  "And  bound  up  his  wounds."  4.  Ministration. 
"Pouring  in  oil  and  wine."  5.  Self -sacrifice.  "And  set 
him  on  his  own  beast."  (He  had  to  walk  himself,  you 
see.)  6.  Hospitality.  "Brought  him  to  an  inn."  (His 
own  home  was  too  far  away  to  take  him  there;  hence 
this  act  was  equivalent  to  receiving  him  under  his  own 
roof.)  7.  Care.  "And  took  care  of  him."  8.  Provision. 
"And  on  the  morrow  ...  he  took  out  two  pence,  and 
gave  them  to  the  host,  and  said  unto  him.  Take  care  of 
him;  and  whatsoever  thou  spendest  more,  when  I  come 
again,  I  will  repay  thee." 

Why  all  this  fulness  of  detail?  Why  did  Jesus  not 
content  himself  with  saying,  "A  certain  Samaritan,  as 
he  journeyed,  came  where  he  was  and  when  he  saw  him, 
he  rescued  and  befriended  him"?  That  would  have  told 
the  story  so  far  as  the  vital  facts  were  concerned,  but 
it  would  n^th^ve  given  us  the  vivid  picture  of  neighbor- 
hood. Neighborhood  is  generous,  large-hearted,  free- 
handed. The  neighborly  spirit  never  counts  the  cost, 
never  measures  duty,  never  leaves  its  work  incomplete. 
It  is  abundant,  overflowing,  ample. 

Here,  too,  the  thought  is  clear  as  crystal.  Neighbor- 
hood is  notjuJaeing,  but  in  doing;  not  in  seeing,  but  in 
feeling  and  fellowship.  Abstract  neighbors,  that  is, 
neighbors  by  nature  and  by  virtue  of  locality,  there  are 
none.  Need  and  nearness  are  transmuted  into  neigh- 
borhood only  by  the  alchemy  of  compassion  and  benef- 
icence. 

Now  gather  up  the  three  scenes  into  one  complete 
picture,  and  what  does  it  teach  us?  This  first:  We 
define  neighborhood  as  an  area;  Jesus  defines  it  as  a 
spirit.  We  make  it  a  limit  of  responsibility ;  he  makes  it 
an  unlimited  opportunity.  Where  sympathy  and  com- 
passion go  out  eagerly  in  response  to  need,  there  and 
there  only  is  neighborhood. 

In  the  second  place,  neighbors  are  made,  not  born. 
Every  man  may    have    just    as    many  neighbors  as  he 

427 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

chooses  to  make,  no  more,  no  less.  He  can  have  none 
else.  More  than  once  have  we  heard  the  complaint,  "I 
have  no  neighbors !"  Sometimes  this  is  true ;  but  whose 
is  the  fault?  Invariably  it  is  the  fault  of  the  complain- 
ing one.  He  has  no  neighbors  because  he  has  made 
none.  Who  would  have  neighbors  must  show  himself 
neighborly.  Perhaps  the  Samaritan  of  the  parable  never 
had  a  neighbor  before.  He  certainly  had  one  after  his 
act  of  kindness.  So  any  man  who  feels  lonely  and  neigh- 
borless  can  speedily  have  as  many  neighbors  as  he 
wishe.s ;  but  he  must  go  out  and  make  them. 

Neighbors  are  easily  made,  and  the  manufacture  does 
not  require  any  particular  kind  or  quality  of  timber.  In 
fact,  the  poorer  the  timber  the  better  the  work  that  can 
be  done.  The  half  dead  Jew  by  the  roadside  was  not  a 
hopeful  subject  for  the  Samaritan's  effort,  but  he  suc- 
ceeded so  well  with  his  task  that  he  has  been  held  up 
before  the  world  for  two  thousand  years  as  the  model 
neighbor  maker.  There  are  numberless  crooked  sticks 
in  every  community,  moral  derelicts,  social  wrecks,  not 
to  speak  of  the  many  needy  ones  and  distressed.  Every 
one  of  these  offers  himself  to  the  man  in  quest  of  neigh- 
bors. Each  utters  his  separate  challenge  to  the  neigh- 
borly spirit. 

One  more  truth  the  story  suggests.  The  question. 
"Who  is  my  neighbor?"  is  suicidal.  It  betrays  the  un- 
neighborly  spirit.  It  aggravates  the  unneighborly  spirit. 
The  truly  neighborly  soul  will  never  stay  to  ask,  "Who 
is  my  neighbor?"  Such  souls  are  too  busy  seizing  every 
opportunity  to  manifest  the  neighborly  spirit,  to  per- 
form some  neighborly  kindness. 

This  is  a  point  to  be  remembered  by  every  reader  of 
the  parable.  Whenever  you  find  yourself  asking.  "Who 
is  my  neighbor?"  you  may  be  sure  that  something  is 
wrong  in  your  own  heart.  You  are  lacking  in  the  true 
spirit  of  neighborliness,  or  you  are  falling  from  the  grace 
of  neighborliness.     What  you  need  is  not  information, 

428 


THE     GOOD      SAMARITAN 

but  transformation;  not  to  discover  the  limit  of  your 
duty,  but  to  be  filled  with  the  spirit  of  love  that  knows 
no  limit. 

Note  also  the  fact  that  while  the  spirit  of  neighbor- 
hood is  often  reciprocal,  it  never  waits  for  that.  The 
Samaritan  did  not  enter  into  a  covenant  with  the  wound- 
ed Jew  for  mutual  defense  or  helpfulness.  The  Jew 
was  too  nearly  dead  for  any  such  compact.  The  chances 
were  even  that  he  would  not  recover.  The  neighborli- 
ness  was  all  on  one  side  and  looked  for  no  return  even  in 
gratitude.  The  neighborhood  that  seeks  a  return  is  not 
the  neighborhood  of  the  Good  Samaritan. 

That  is  a  mistaken  interpretation  which  makes  this 
parable  the  basis  of  various  fraternal  organizations,  and 
sees  in  these  the  fulfilment  of  its  spirit.  Such  organi- 
zations insist  upon  mutual  obligation.  Reciprocity  of 
helpfulness  is  their  key-note.  Their  members  say  to  one 
another  in  effect,  "I  will  help  you  in  time  of  need  if  you 
will  help  me.  I  will  help  you  because  you  help  me." 
Now  these  organizations  doubtless  accomplish  a  g^eat 
deal  of  good  in  the  world,  and  relieve  many  cases  of 
need,  but  they  are  in  no  true  sense  the  successors  or  rep- 
resentatives in  our  time  of  the  Good  Samaritan.  They 
are  not  the  exponents  of  real  neighborhood.  The  kind- 
ness that  conditions  itself  upon  a  return  in  kind  is  not 
neighborhood,  for  that  is  wholly  unselfish.  Neighbor- 
hood gives  with  no  thought  or  hope  of  receiving,  gives 
freely,  gives  lavishly,  its  one  concern  being  to  meet  the 
need  and  to  meet  it  amply.  If  it  brings  any  return,  the 
return  is  as  spontaneous  and  as  unconditioned  as  is  the 
kindness  itself. 

The  world  needs  more  neighbors.     It  can  never  have 
^too  many.     We  can  well  spare  multitudes  of  men  and 
.     women  who  are  forever  asking  questions,  mooning  over 
social  problems,  searching  for  the  boundary  lines  of  re- 
sponsibility and  duty.     But  the  men  and  women  who  do 
things,   kind  things,  neighborly    things,    regardless   of 

439 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

boundaries  and  claims,  we  can  never  have  enough  of 
them.  And  this  is  the  Christly  ideal, — not  "Go  thou  and 
investigate  or  measure  or  study,"  but  "Go  thou  and  do." 
Go  and  make  neighbors,  make  them  anywhere,  make 
them  everywhere  and  always. 

Who  is  my  neighbor?  The  question  never  has  been 
answered,  never  can  be  answered.  It  must  ever  recoil 
upon  the  soul  that  asks  it,  an  endless  interrogative.  But 
go  forth  and  find  some  needy  soul,  bring  yourself  near 
to  such  a  one,  give  yourself  to  him  generously,  ungrudg- 
ingly, in  sympathy  and  self-sacrifice  and  helpfulness, 
and  into  your  soul  shall  shine  with  all  the  glory  of  a 
divine  revelation  the  meaning  of  that  word,  Neighbor- 
hood. 


430 


God's  Fool 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

God's  Fool 

THE  RICH  HUSBANDMAN 

Luke  12:16-21 
Text. — "  God  said  unto  him.  Thou  fool.  "—Luke  12:20 

IESUS  has  sketched  for  us  a  portrait  of  God's  fool. 
These  are  his  essential  features: — "He  layeth  up 
treasure  for  himself,  and  is  not  rich  toward  God." 
All  else  is  incidental.  You  may  change  the  other 
features  as  you  will.  You  may  read  into  them 
all  possible  beauty  and  grace,  but  these  remain,  like  the 
flattened  skull  and  the  lusterless  eye,  the  invariable 
tokens  of  spiritual  idiocy. 

I  think  we  often  read  this  story  in  such  a  way  that 
we  altogether  miss  its  real  meaning.  We  magnify  the 
details  till  they  overshadow  the  application.  And  we  are 
somewhat  startled  to  find  ourselves  admiring  or  pitying 
the  rfch  landowner  instead  of  condemning  him.  True, 
we  have  called  him  a  fool  for  ages — this  man  of  the 
parable — but  have  we  not  often  thought  of  him  as  un- 
fortunate rather  than  foolish?  Has  he  not  many  times 
seemed  to  us  a  really  wise  and  worthy  man  who  was  the 
helpless  victim  of  capricious  Omnipotence?  He  had 
made  ready  for  years  of  rational  and  well-earned  enjoy- 
ment, and  God  cut  him  off  in  a  day.  We  have  written 
the  words,  "THIS  NIGHT"  in  large  capitals,  and  have 
pitied  the  poor  fellow  because  of  them. 

Still,  we  have  consented,  out  of  respect  to  the  rccog- 

48S 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

nized  judgment  and  authority  of  Jesus,  to  call  the  straw 
man  a  fool,  while  we  have  taken  the  liberty  to  call  his 
living  counterpart  a  wise  man  and  to  make  him  our 
model  in  action,  hoping  that  God  may  be  more  kind  to  us 
than  to  him.  We  have  thought  that  if  we  could  only 
blot  out  that  sentence,  "This  night  thy  soul  shall  be  re- 
quired of  thee,"  we  should  thus  transform  arrant  folly 
into  profoundest  wisdom  and  make  over  our  Lord's  red 
light  of  warning  into  a  guiding  star  of  truest  Christian 
economy. 

Now  look  at  the  portrait  a  moment  candidly  and  say, 
Does  it  not  bear  a  marked  resemblance  to  our  wise  man? 
Is  not  this  fool  of  God  the  veritable  twin  brother  to 
the  world's  sage  or  oracle?  Is  he  not  the  man  whom  we 
consult  in  all  financial  matters?  the  man  whom  we  de- 
light to  honor  and  to  praise  and  to  imitate?  Is  not  his 
standard  of  life  even  higher  than  the  average  in  this 
Christian  land?     Notice  a  few  points. 

(a)  In  the  first  place,  his  wealth  has  been  honestly 
acquired.  There  is  no  hint  of  injustice  or  wrong-doing 
in  the  story.  "The  ground  of  a  certain  rich  man  brought 
forth  plentifully."  He  was  a  farmer.  He  was  a  pro- 
ducer of  wealth.  He  had  not  become  rich  by  means  of 
speculation  or  oppression  or  dishonesty.  He  had  not 
taken  his  wealth  from  the  pockets  of  others  by  robbery, 
legal  or  illegal.  No  one  had  been  made  poorer  by  his 
increasing  riches.  On  the  contrary,  the  whole  commu- 
nity was  benefited.  His  broad  acres  required  many 
hands  for  their  culture,  and  his  wealth  was  the  storehouse 
from  which  many  workers  drew  their  wages,  many  fam- 
ilies their  living.  With  increasing  prosperity  he  gave 
employment  to  an  ever-increasing  number  of  persons, 
and  so  the  community  rejoiced  in  his  acquisition  and 
looked  upon  him  as  a  great  patron  of  industry,  one  of 
the  few  who  enrich  the  world  with  every  enrichment  of 
themselves. 

(b)  In  the  second  place,  he  was  thoughtful  and  far- 

434 


THE       RICH       HUSBANDMAN 

sighted.  He  prepared  in  tinie  for  emergencies.  "He 
thought  within  himself,  saying,  What  shall  I  do,  because 
I  have  no  room  where  to  bestow  my  fruits?"'  Anything 
Mnwise  in  that?  Was  it  not  proof  of  the  truest  wisdom 
and  prudence  to  make  timely  preparation  for  the  coming 
harvest?  A  foolish  man  indeed  would  he  be  who  should 
wait  till  the  harvest  time  was  upon  him  before  acting, 
and  then  permit  valuable  crops  to  go  to  waste  for  want 
of  storage. 

(c)  Yet  again,  he  was  practical  as  well  as  thought- 
ful.. No  sooner  did  he  realize  the  need  than  he  set 
himself  to  provide  for  it.  With  him  to  think  was  to  act. 
"He  said.  This  will  I  do:  I  will  pull  down  my  barns, 
and  build  greater;  and  there  will  I  bestow  all  my  fruits 
and  my  goods."  Now  do  not  fly  off  at  a  tangent  and  say 
that  he  did  wrong  in  this,  that  it  was  selfish  and  wicked 
for  him  to  heap  up  such  wealth ;  for  that  is  what  we  are 
all  of  us  trying  to  do,  and  any  such  application  of  the 
parable  recoils  with  deadly  force.  We  must  always  be 
careful  lest  the  arrow  we  aim  at  another  hit  ourselves, 
lest  our  supposed  dart  prove  itself  to  be  a  boomerang. 

Remember,  too,  that  this  man  was  not  planning  to 
hoard  up  his  grain,  as  a  miser  hoards  his  gold,  with  no 
intention  of  using  it.  He  was  not  holding  it  as  godless 
speculators  hold  corners  in  wheat  and  corn  and  flour, 
permitting  their  poorer  neighbors  to  starve  if  need  be 
in  order  that  they  may  themselves  wring  a  few  more  dol- 
lars from  the  public  necessity.  No !  he  was  only  making 
reasonable  provision  for  his  own  future  needs.  He  was 
preparing  to  retire  from  active  life  and  from  the  great 
field  of  competition  that  he  might  give  himself  up  to  the 
enjoyment  of  his  possessions.  For  years  he  had  toiled 
and  struggled,  he  had  denied  himself  many  a  luxury, 
he  had  refused  every  invitation  to  take  a  holiday,  and  his 
wealth  was  the  result  of  his  toil.  Now  he  will  take  a 
rest.     Now  he  will  enjoy  that  which  his  labor  has  won. 

(d)  More  than  all,  he  zuas  not  excessively  greedy. 

435 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

Having  secured  enough  for  his  own  needs,  he  was  willing 
to  retire  and  give  place  to  others.  "I  will  say  to  my 
soul,  Soul,  take  thine  ease."  His  is  not  the  miserly, 
grasping  spirit  that  will  not  cease  working  and  striving 
so  long  as  anything  remains  to  be  gathered.  He  does 
not  propose  to  go  on  hoarding  all  his  days.  According 
to  a  reasonable  estimate  he  has  wealth  sufficient  to  en- 
sure him  a  comfortable  living  for  the  remainder  of  his 
time.  Now  he  will  turn  over  his  farm  with  its  resources 
and  opportunities  into  the  hands  of  others  and  let  them 
become  as  wealthy  as  himself.  In  these  days,  when  few 
men  are  willing  to  rest  in  their  eager  pursuit  of  wealth 
so  long  as  any  gleanings  remain  and  they  have  the  power 
to  strive  for  them,  this  man  is  a  model  of  unselfishness 
and  moderation. 

Yes,  I  repeat  the  thought,  this  is  a  truthful  portrait 
of  the  man  whom  we,  the  disciples  of  to-day,  call  wise, 
kind-hearted,  thrifty,  and  even  benevolent.  We  praise 
him;  we  honor  him,  and  in  some  feeble  and  hesitating 
way  we  imitate  him,  and  flatter  ourselves  that  the  meas- 
ure of  our  imitation  is  also  the  measure  of  our  wisdom 
and  even  of  our  Christianity. 

But  God  says  now,  as  he  said  then,  "Thou  fool !"  He 
has  not  changed  his  opinion  by  so  much  as  a  single  iota 
in  two  thousand  years.  The  man  of  the  parable  was  a 
fool  in  the  sight  of  God.  His  imitator  of  yesterday 
was  a  fool  by  the  same  judgment.  Why?  Because  he 
made  such  careful  provision  for  his  bodily  wants?  No. 
Because  he  provided  for  many  years  when  he  was  to 
live  but  one  day?  No.  He  could  not  know  that  his 
time  was  to  be  so  brief.  He  did  right  to  provide  for 
many  years.  He  was  wise  to  secure  himself  against 
material  want  for  the  time  which  would  probably  be 
his.  There  was  no  folly  in  this.  There  was  every  prob- 
ability that  he  would  live  for  many  years,  and  he  was 
wise  to  prepare  for  that.  But  while  that  was  only  a 
probability,  there  was  the  positive  certainty  that  his  soul 

436 


THE      RICH       HUSBANDMAN 

would  live  through  all  eternity,  and  he  was  a  thriftless 
fool  to  make  no  provision  for  that.  Wise  to  provide 
against  the  possible ;  fool  to  neglect  the  certain.  Wise  to 
foresee  and  supply  the  needs  of  the  body ;  fool  to  imag- 
ine that  the  soul  could  be  fed  with  corn  and  wheat.  Wise 
in  what  he  had  done;  fool  because  of  what  he  had  not 
done. 

Note  his  words,  "Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up." 
Where  had  he  laid  up  anything  for  his  soul?  Can  the 
soul's  goods  be  stored  in  barns  or  deposited  in  banks  or 
represented  in  stocks  and  bonds?  No.  His  well-filled 
barns  might  satisfy  all  bodily  wants  for  many  years.  He 
might  live  in  the  utmost  comfort  for  a  long  time.  He 
might  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry  for  half  a  century;  and 
yet,  with  all  his  plenty,  his  soul  might  be  eternally 
starved.  In  the  midst  of  this  abundance  his  life  might 
be  miserably  pinched  and  unsatisfied.  Many  a  soul  has 
perished  with  hunger  while  the  body  was  oppressed  with 
luxury.  Many  a  comfortable  home,  yes,  many  a  costly 
palace,  is  the  abode  of  hearts  that  are  filled  with  long- 
ings persistent  but  unsatisfied. 

How  often,  too,  does  it  happen  that  the  attainment  of 
one's  ambition  strikes  the  death-knell  to  the  spirit  of 
activity  and  satisfaction !  With  the  retirement  from  labor 
and  struggle,  life  loses  all  zest  and  meaning,  and  it  is 
impossible  for  the  restless  one  to  eat,  drink  and  be  merry 
as  he  had  fondly  hoped. 

This,  then,  is  his  folly ;  this  is  the  point  of  censure ;  not 
that  he  was  miserly ;  for  he  was  not ;  not  that  he  was 
selfish  in  the  ordinary  sense;  for  that  does  not  appear; 
not  that  he  claimed  in  any  undue  measure  the  ov/nership 
of  his  riches ;  for  no  emphasis  is  laid  upon  that ;  but  that 
his  provision  was  too  small,  his  foresight  too  limited. 
"This  night  thy  soul  shall  be  required  of  thee:  then 
whose  shall  those  things  be,  which  thou  hast  provided?" 
Thou  art  prepared  for  the  probable ;  art  thou  prepared 
for  the  inevitable?    Thou  hast  much  goods  laid    up  for 

437 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

many  years;  hast  thou  anything  laid  up  for  eternity?  or 
shall  all  thy  wealth  pass  into  other  hands  while  thy 
soul  goes  forth  empty,  naked  and  starving?  Foolish 
one!  Thy  body  has  seemed  of  greater  importance  to 
thee  than  thy  soul.  Thou  hast  thought  more  of  many 
years  than  of  eternity. 

Study  the  phrases  in  which  Jesus  sets  forth  his  folly : — 

(a)  He  prefaces  the  parable  with  the  statement  that 
"Life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of  things."  All 
the  material  wealth  of  the  world  cannot  insure  a  moment 
of  life.  It  cannot  bribe  a  soul  to  delay  its  departure  a 
single  day.  It  cannot  even  transform  the  continued  ex- 
istence of  years  into  anything  worthy  the  name  of  life. 
In  the  midst  of  plenty  there  may  be  disappointment,  sor- 
row, pain,  misery,  that  the  largest  wealth  cannot  alle- 
viate. Life  may  become  stunted,  dwarfed,  in  the  very 
process  of  wealth-winning.  It  will  surely  become  so 
if  we  permit  ourselves  to  imagine  that  things  are  more 
important  than  life.  Life,  life,  that  is  the  important 
thing,  the  only  important  thing.  Life  is  not  mere  con- 
tinued existence.  It  is  growth;  it  is  progress;  it  is  ca- 
pacity to  enjoy  or  to  suffer.  And  material  riches  are  of 
value  only  as  they  minister  to  that. 

(b)  A  single  sentence  pricks  the  bubble  of  this  man's 
hope.  "This  night  thy  soul  shall  be  required  of  thee." 
A  startling  announcement,  truly,  yet  its  force  is  not  al- 
together dependent  upon  the  words  "This  night."  Those 
words  merely  put  in  the  present  tense  what  would  have 
been  no  less  startling  a  score  of  years  later.  Whether 
now  or  then  the  soul  would  go  out  in  poverty.  There 
were  no  spiritual  riches  which  it  might  enjoy  either  in 
this  world  or  the  next.  Had  earthly  existence  been  con- 
tinued for  a  thousand  years  there  would  have  been  no 
life.  The  shriveled  soul  could  do  nothing  but  vege- 
tate or  petrify.  No  provision  had  been  made  for  its 
growth  or  enjoyment.  There  were  only  things,  things, 
things,  and  life  consisteth  not  in  things. 

438 


THE       RICH      HUSBANDMAN 

How  differently  the  same  announcement  affects  one 
who  has  really  provided  for  life.  Hear  St.  Paul  ex- 
claiming, "I  have  fought  the  good  fight,  I  have  finished 
the  course,  I  have  kept  the  faith :  henceforth  there  is  laid 
up  for  me  the  crown  of  righteousness."  He  was  rich 
towards  God,  and  it  mattered  not  to  him  whether  he  re- 
mained to  enjoy  those  riches  in  the  circles  where  they 
had  been  won,  or  went  to  reap  their  fruits  in  another 
sphere.  In  either  realm  they  were  of  permanent  value. 
The  gallant  Wolfe  felt  it  no  hardship  to  be  called  home, 
in  the  very  moment  of  his  triumph  on  the  plains  of 
Abraham.  By  his  heroism  that  day  he  had  gained  some- 
thing more  than  things.  His  riches  were  not  such  as  he 
must  leave  to  another,  and  he  could  exclaim,  "I  die  hap- 
py." There  are  riches  that  are  not  lost  or  in  any  way 
qualified  by  the  mere  change  of  scene  from  this  world 
to  the  next. 

(c)  How  pertinent  is  the  question,  "Whose  shall 
those  THINGS  he,  which  thou  hast  provided?"  That 
is  the  sharpest  sting  in  the  punishment  of  him  who  lays 
up  treasure  for  himself  alone.  It  must  some  time  slip 
into  other  hands,  and  often  into  the  hands  of  those  least 
pleasing  to  him.  How  many  a  fortune  has  been  amassed 
by  untold  thrift  and  economy,  only  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  some  idle  spendthrift  to  be  scattered  to  the  winds. 
A  common  folly  of  the  present  day  is  the  practise  of 
gathering  property  during  a  lifetime  with  the  purpose 
of  leaving  it  to  noble  objects  by  bequest.  But  the  sum- 
mons of  God  does  not  always  await  the  completing  of 
wills.  And  when  it  does  so,  the  benevolent  intention  is 
many  times  frustrated  by  legal  miscarriages  or  swal- 
lowed up  in  the  wrangling  of  attorneys,  and  so  the  di- 
vine account  book  shows  in  place  of  a  large  balance  of 
"riches  towards  God,"  only  a  blank  page  inscribed  with 
the  words,  "Thou  foolish  one  !'* 

(d)  The  whole  significance  of  the  parable  is  gath- 
ered up  and  put  into  the  one  closing  sentence,  'So  is 

439 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

he  that  layeth  up  treasure  for  himself,  and  is  not  ri^h  to- 
ward God."  Foolish,  it  is^  to  lay  up  treasure  for  one- 
self, to  provide  against  the  needs  of  declining  years? 

V^Not  always.  But  it  is  always  unspeakably  foolish  not  to 
be  rich  towards  God.  Here  is  the  emphatic  thought. 
This  parable  is  not  a  denunciation  of  wealth  or  of  genu- 
ine thrift.  It  is  rather  a  plea  for  greater  thrift,  a  warn- 
ing against  the  danger  of  spiritual  poverty.  It  calls 
for  a  larger  outlook,  for  more  extended  foresight.  It 
says  to  us,  "Provide  not  only  for  the  needs  of  time,  but 
for  those  of  eternity  as  well.  Prepare  not  alone  for  the 
probable,  but  for  the  inevitable.  Let  your  acquisition 
be  for  the  soul — i.  e.,  for  the  life  itself — as  well  as  for 
the  body  which  is  but  a  temporary  abode  of  the  life." 

^  There  is  no  necessary  antagonism  between  material 
and  spiritual  riches.  Jesus  never  indulged  in  sweeping 
and  unqualified  denunciations  of  wealth.  To  them  that 
truly  love  God,  money,  even  though  it  be  counted  by 
the  thousands  and  millions  of  dollars,  will  at  last  appear 
to  be  one  of  the  "all  things"  that  work  together  for 
good.  Thrift  in  religion  does  not  imply  thriftlessness 
or  failure  in  business.  Heavenly  wisdom  is  not  synon- 
ymous with  earthly  folly.  No  one  ever  more  truly  and 
wisely  stimulated  the  spirit  of  economy  and  thrift  than 
Jesus.  Yet  he  always  made  material  enrichment  sub- 
ordinate to  the  infinitely  more  vital  interests  of  the 
soul.  "Seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God,"  was  his  change- 
less command,  but  he  followed  it  with  the  words,  "All 
these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 

Earthly  treasure  rightly  used  may  help  us  to  gain  the 
heavenly  riches.  Life  consisteth  not  in  things,  but  things 
may  become  the  instruments  for  enlarging  life.  We 
may  lay  up  treasure  for  ourselves  to  a  certain  extent, 
at  least,  and  at  the  same  time  be  rich  towards  God.  The 
two  may  go  hand  in  hand,  or  they  may  not.  If  at  any 
time  we  must  choose  between  them,  blessed  is  he  who 
lets  go  the  earthly  and  prefers  to  be  rich  towards  God. 

440 


THE       RICH       HUSBANDMAN 

He  who  has  learned  to  exchange  the  earthly  coin  at  par 
value  for  the  riches  of  the  heavenly  kingdom  is  doubly 
blessed. 

There  are  investments  of  money  that  make  us  rich, 
not  for  a  brief  period,  but  for  eternity.  Look  at  Dr. 
Pearsons  of  Chicago,  making  money  simply  that  he  may 
invest  it  in  struggling  schools  and  colleges  and  other 
benevolent  institutions,  so  helping  numberless  young  men 
and  women  to  a  larger  and  more  useful  life.  Every 
dollar  he  accumulates  adds  to  his  own  present  soul  life, 
and  it  matters  not  when  he  may  be  called  to  give  up  his 
earthly  existence ;  his  wealth  will  go  on  bearing  fruit 
for  his  own  spiritual  enrichment.  All  down  through 
the  coming  ages  those  who  have  been  partakers  of  the 
gifts  which  he  has  given  and  all  other  lives  that  have 
been  made  larger  or  better  through  their  influence  will 
go  to  the  increase  of  his  soul's  inheritance.  They  shall 
be  his  and  not  another's. 

Whoever  uses  his  wealth,  whether  great  or  small,  to 
make  homes  brighter,,  to  make  hearts  happier,  to  make 
lives  better,  is  investing  not  for  time  but  for  eternity. 

Centuries  ago  a  woman  in  extreme  poverty,  out  of 
overflowing  love  to  God  gave  two  mites  to  the  service 
of  his  kingdom.  I  know  not  for  what  purpose  they  were 
used.  Doubtless  not  as  helpfully  as  they  might  be  em- 
ployed in  these  days  of  practical  benevolence;  but  they 
were  devoted  to  God  in  the  only  manner  possible  for 
her.  Through  all  the  succeeding  generations  those  mites 
have  been  bearing  interest.  In  every  age  men  have  said 
as  they  have  poured  their  gifts  into  the  Lord's  treasury, 
whether  for  religious  or  philanthropic  purposes,  "I  will 
give  my  mite";  and  whenever  that  word  has  been  ear- 
nestly spoken,  testifying  that  the  poor  woman's  little 
gift  has  been  the  primary  inspiration  of  the  greater 
offering,  the  latter  has  been  put  down  to  the  credit  of 
the  widow  in  the  book  of  life,  being  reckoned  as  interest 

441 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF    JESUS 

on  her  original  investment.  To-day  no  man  can  com- 
pute the  wealth  that  is  hers.  She  is  one  of  heaven's 
multi-millionaires,  and  her  wealth  has  not  yet  reached 
its  limit.  That  is  the  sort  of  property  that  men  can 
carry  with  them  to  the  next  world. 

If  adaptation  be  the  token  of  life,  then  surely  this 
parable  is  a  part  of  God's  living  word;  for  it  fits  with 
marvelous  exactness  into  the  present  state  of  human 
thought  and  activity.  It  finds  a  most  perfect  illustration 
in  the  methods  and  ideals  of  modern  society.  This  is  a 
covetous  age.  I  do  not  mean  by  that  an  age  of  hard  and 
grasping  miserliness.  We  are  too  intelligent,  too  refined, 
too  polite  to  imitate  the  rude  frankness  of  the  man  who 
interrupted  a  sermon  with  the  selfish  request,  "Master, 
speak  to  my  brother,  that  he  divide  the  inheritance  with 
me."  Ours  is  the  more  delicate  and  therefore  the  more 
dangerous  covetousness  of  the  parable.  Our  aims  and 
ideals  are  exceedingly  material.  We  are  thrifty,  we  are 
diligent,  we  are  careful  for  the  future  (i.  e.,  for  "many 
years"),  but  our  whole  thought  and  energy  are  bent  to- 
wards the  acquisition  of  things.  Money,  food,  clothing, 
home  comforts,  luxuries,  education  and  enjoyments,  all 
these  we  labor  for.  And  we  think  that  these  constitute 
life.  So  with  all  our  wealth  and  opportunity  and  re- 
sources we  are  in  danger  of  soul  starvation  and  eternal 
disappointment. 

Yet  it  need  not  be  so.  If  we  are  not  rich  towards 
God  the  folly  is  in  us,  not  in  our  circumstances.  Never 
was  such  an  opportunity  for  spiritual  wealth  as  we  of 
the  present  day  enjoy.  Openings  for  spiritual  invest- 
ment present  themselves  on  every  hand.  We  may  find 
them  at  our  very  doors.  This  is  preeminently  the  age 
of  philanthropic  and  missionary  enterprise.  It  is  the 
privilege  of  every  man  in  our  day  and  land  to  link  him- 
self with  the  growth  of  life  and  character  about  him,  to 
have  some  share  in  the  uplifting  of  his  own  community 
or  in  the  larger  spiritual  advancement  of  the  race.     We 

443 


THE       RICH       HUSBANDMAN 

may  transmute  things  into  life,  wealth  into  character, 
by  means  of  the  alchemy  of  unselfishness  and  consecra- 
tion ;  and,  so  doing,  ours  shall  no  longer  be  the  curse  of 
folly,  but  to  us  shall  be  spoken  that  other  word. — 

"They  that  be  wise  shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of 
the  firmament ;  and  they  that  turn  many  to  righteousness 
as  the  stars  for  ever  and  ever," 


443 


Preparation  for  the  Coming 
of  the  Son  of  Man 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

Preparation  for  the  Coming 
of  the  Son  of  Man 

THE    HOUSEHOLDER   AND    THE    THIEF 

Luke  12:35^8;  Matt.  24:42-51 

Text.— "Be  je  also  ready.  "—Luke  12:40 

THE  coming  of  the  Son  of  man"  is  a  topic 
frequently  recurring  in  the  later  days  of 
our  Lord's  ministry.  Again  and  again 
he  assures  his  disciples  that  he  is  about 
to  leave  them  for  a  time,  but  that  he  will 
return  to  consummate  the  work  which  he  has  now 
just  begun.  The  manner,  the  place,  and  the  time  of 
his  return  he  leaves  wholly  indeterminate.  More  than 
this,  he  plainly  declares  that  they  will  not  and  cannot  be 
known  beforehand,  but  exhorts  every  disciple  to  "watch" 
and  "be  ready"  for  the  event  whenever  it  may  occur.  In 
every  utterance  upon  the  subject  the  element  of  unex- 
pectedness is  made  very  emphatic.  Whatever  else  the 
coming  of  the  Son  of  man  may  signify,  it  certainly  rep- 
resents the  supreme  crisis  or  emergency  of  human  life, 
and  this  emergency  touches  life  at  various  angles. 

The  parable  of  The  Ten  Virgins,  for  example,  \%  a 
picture  of  the  relation  of  this  crisis  to  character,  while 
the  parable  of  The  Householder  and  The  Thief  with  its 
accompanying  semi-parable  of  The  Faithful  and  Un- 
faithful Servants  depicts  the  relation  of  the  crisis  to 
conduct.  The  crisis  is  ever  the  test  of  character,  but  the 
preparation  for  the  crisis  is  in  conduct.    "If  the  master 

447 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

of  the  house  had  known  in  what  watch  the  thief  was 
coming,  he  would  have  watched."  In  other  words,  he 
would  have  prepared  for  the  special  emergency  by  his 
own  activity. 

Few  expositors  include  this  sketch  in  their  catalogue 
of  our  Lord's  parables.  Some  have  treated  the  subor- 
dinate picture  which  I  have  called  the  "semi-parable" 
as  the  central  theme.  Clearly,  the  entire  discourse  is  too 
closely  connected  to  admit  of  division^  but  to  my  mind 
the  picture  of  the  householder  and  thief  is  the  kernel. 
That  is  the  true  parable,  of  which  the  rest  is  an  explana- 
tion. The  key-note  of  the  entire  passage  is  preparedness 
for  the  great  emergency.  The  householder  speaks  of  the 
necessity  of  being  always  ready,  and  the  two  servants 
illustrate  the  nature  of  the  preparation  required.  The 
declaration  that  the  householder  would  have  watched, 
might,  if  left  thus,  encourage  the  notion  of  mere  idle 
waiting  for  the  Lord's  advent.  It  was  therefore  neces- 
sary to  add  the  further  parabolic  explanation  to  show 
that  watching  implied  activity,  faithfulness,  service.  Not 
a  mere  state  of  passive  expectation,  however  eager  and 
believing,  is  the  true  preparation  for  the  coming  of  the 
Lord,  but  active  effort,  obedience  to  his  commands, 
devotion  to  his  service. 

"Conduct,"  says  Matthew  Arnold,  "is  seven-eighths 
of  life."  While  we  may  question  the  exactness  of  his 
proportions,  yet  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  parable 
the  utterance  voices  a  profound  truth.  Conduct  is  to  the 
remainder  of  life  as  the  apple  or  the  pear  or  the  orange 
to  the  tree  upon  which  it  grows.  To  be  sure  you  must 
have  the  right  kind  of  a  tree  to  produce  the  desired  fruit. 
Men  do  not  gather  grapes  of  thorns,  or  pears  from  a 
scrub-oak,  nor  will  a  stunted  and  ill-conditioned  tree 
produce  large  quantities  of  fine  fruit ;  but,  after  all,  it  is 
the  fruit  that  is  of  paramount  importance.  At  least 
seven-eighths  of  the  value  of  an  orchard  or  of 
an    orange    grove    is    represented    by  its  fruit.     For 

iiS 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  AND  THE  THIEF 

wood  or  shade-trees  neither  would  be  worth  cul- 
tivating. The  fruit-grower  does  not  boast  of  the 
height  or  beauty  or  symmetry  of  his  trees.  He  does 
not  talk  of  the  comfort  to  be  enjoyed  by  resting  under 
their  shade.  No;  he  shows  you  his  pears,  his  peaches, 
his  oranges,  and  tells  you  they  are  the  best  in  the  market. 
When  the  nurseryman  tries  to  sell  a  particular  variety 
of  fruit  tree,  he  says  little  or  nothing  about  the  tree 
itself,  but  he  does  speak  of  the  fruit,  of  its  size,  its  flavor, 
its  abundance,  its  superiority  to  all  other  varieties.  In 
buying  you  will  choose  the  most  ungainly  trees  if  they 
produce  the  best  fruit.  Whoever  should  do  otherwise 
must  be  wanting  the  most  ordinary  common  sense. 

"He  shall  be  like  a  tree,"  said  David.  "By  their  fruits 
ye  shall  know  them,"  said  Jesus.  There  you  have  it. 
Human  life  is  a  tree  and  conduct  is  its  fruit.  It  is  by 
conduct  that  we  gage  the  value  of  manhood.  Not  what 
a  man  is,  but  what  he  does,  is  the  supreme  question. 
But  you  say,  "Conduct  depends  upon  character.  What 
a  man  is  determines  what  he  does."  True,  unquestion- 
ably true.  Character  is  the  root,  the  trunk,  the  branch; 
yet  these  all  find  their  meaning,  their  value  in  the  fruit, 
which  is  conduct. 

When  we  study  the  life  history  of  a  great  man,  the 
first  question  we  ask  about  him  is,  "What  did  he  do?" 
And  we  trace  his  character,  his  environment,  his  hered- 
ity, only  when  his  deeds  make  such  an  investigation 
worth  while.  If  a  man  has  done  nothing  worthy  of  con- 
sideration, we  seldom  trouble  ourselves  to  ask  who  or 
what  he  was.  The  true  heroes  of  history  are  the  men  of 
noble  action,  of  heroic  conduct.  Beside  them  the  men 
of  negative  or  latent  power  are  insignificant. 

Witness,  two  prominent  figures  of  the  Reformation 
period,  Erasmus  and  Luther.  Erasmus  was  a  man  of 
broader  mind,  profounder  scholarship,  more  progressive 
thought,  and  more  pleasing  manners  than  Luther,  but 
his  learning  and  culture  did  not  inspire  him  to  earnest 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

and  self-sacrificing  action,  hence  his  name  is  forgotten 
by  the  multitudes.  The  tree  was  graceful  and  attractive 
in  appearance,  but  it  bore  no  valuable  fruit  to  feed  the 
life  of  the  race.  Luther  on  the  other  hand,  albeit  some- 
what rude  and  uncouth  in  manner,  was  a  man  of  action, 
fearless,  devoted  action.  The  crooked  and  storm-torn 
tree  bore  abundance  of  rich  fruit.  It  was  for  this  that 
the  name  of  Martin  Luther  has  become  a  household  word 
throughout  Protestant  Christendom. 

Again,  note  the  contrast  between  a  Chesterfield  and  a 
Cromwell.  On  the  one  hand,  Lord  Chesterfield,  distin- 
guished by  brilliancy  of  wit,  polished  grace  of  manner, 
elegance  of  conversation,  "a  wit  among  lords  and  a  lord 
among  wits,"  the  companion  of  famous  men  and  himself 
most  famous  of  all  for  his  urbanity,  has  won  little  regard 
from  the  majority  of  his  fellow  men,  because  his  gifted 
life  bore  no  worthy  fruit  of  noble  action.  On  the  other 
hand,  plain  Oliver  Cromwell  manifested  nothing  of  grace 
or  beauty  in  his  life.  As  was  said  of  a  greater  than 
Cromwell,  "He  had  no  form  nor  comeliness;  and  when 
we  see  him,  there  is  no  beauty  that  we  should  desire 
him."  A  rough  character  produced  by  a  rough  time. 
Yet  the  judgment  of  history  and  the  verdict  of  public 
opinion  has  awarded  him  a  high  place  and  honor;  for 
his  was  a  life  of  action.  Whatever  he  was,  he  did  great 
things  and  good  things  for  men.  He  gave  a  great  im- 
petus to  the  cause  of  human  liberty,  and  not  the  gov- 
ernment of  Great  Britain  alone,  but  all  government  has 
been  milder  and  more  just  because  of  him.  Therefore 
men  admire  and  praise  him. 

Over  against  the  saying  of  Matthew  Arnold  we 
may  put  that  other  saying  of  Carlyle :  "The  end  of  life 
is  an  action,  not  a  thought,  though  it  were  the  noblest." 

And  this  is  precisely  the  truth  that  Jesus  would  have 
us  discover  in  the  parable  before  us.  The  whole  force 
and  meaning  of  his  explanation  is  concentrated  in  those 
words,  "Blessed  is  that  servant,  whom  his  lord  when  he 

450 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  AND  THE  THIEF 

Cometh  shall  find  so  doing."  The  contrast  which  he 
draws  is  a  contrast  of  action,  of  conduct.  Could  his 
meaning  be  more  clear  or  unmistakable?  Not  what  one 
believes  or  knows  or  desires,  not  even  what  one  is,  is 
the  supreme  test;  but  what  one  does. 

In  the  direct  discourse  that  follows  this  series  of  para- 
bles, our  Lord  returns  to  this  truth  and  makes  it  yet  more 
emphatic.  As  he  paints  a  vivid  picture  of  the  final 
separation  between  the  righteous  and  the  wicked,  he 
makes  conduct  the  ultimate  ground  of  the  judgment  pro- 
nounced upon  each.  To  those  on  the  one  side  he  says, 
"Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it" — i.  e.,  did  that  which  was  noble 
and  true  and  kind — "Come."  And  to  those  on  the  left 
hand,  "Since  ye  did  it  not,  therefore  depart."  Does  he 
then  undervalue  character  and  consecration?  Not  by 
any  means.  But  he  sees  in  conduct  their  necessary 
fruition,  and  tests  both  by  that.  If  conduct,  justly  es- 
timated, be  evil,  then  it  follows  of  necessity  that  the  char- 
acter is  worthless  and  the  consecration  a  sham. 

One  asked  of  Demosthenes,  so  goes  the  story,  "What 
is  the  first  quality  of  a  great  orator?"  Demosthenes  re- 
plied, "Action."  "What  is  the  second  quality?"  Again 
he  answered,  "Action."  "What  the  third?"  'Action." 
There  you  have  another  witness  to  the  truth  we  are  in- 
sisting upon.  Action,  conduct,  is  the  supreme  test  of  the 
great  orator.  It  is  the  test  of  worth  or  greatness  in  any 
field.  What  is  the  first,  the  second,  the  third  attribute  of 
the  successful  teacher?  Action.  What  are  the  marks 
of  a  great  legislator?  Action.  What  are  the  proofs  of 
courage  in  the  soldier,  of  skill  in  the  physician,  of  com- 
mercial ability  in  the  merchant,  of  trustworthiness  in 
the  servant?  Action,  action,  action.  By  the  same  token 
the  prime  qualities  of  the  Christian,  the  qualities  that 
demonstrate  the  value  of  his  faith,  and  that  best  prepare 
him   for  the   coming  of  his   Lord   are — action,   action, 

ACTION  ! 

Turning  again  to  our  parable,  we  note  a  second  point 

451 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

that  calls  for  the  subordinate  or  explanatory  sketch. 
While  the  midnight  thief  well  embodies  the  unexpected- 
ness of  the  emergency,  the  householder  cannot  perfectly 
represent  the  situation  of  the  disciple.  He  could  not  be 
continually  prepared.  To  be  sure,  he  might  attend  to  the 
locks  and  defenses  of  his  house,  he  might  keep  arms 
close  at  hand  to  repel  the  intruder;  still  these  are  but 
imperfect  preparations.  The  man  must  sleep;  he  must 
attend  to  other  matters  that  interfere  with  watchfulness ; 
he  cannot  give  his  entire  attention  to  anything  so  uncer- 
tain as  the  coming  of  a  robber  who  may  not  come  at  all. 
He  cannot  employ  a  watchman,  for  that  would  entail 
greater  loss  than  would  be  likely  to  result  from  burglary. 

In  contrast  with  this,  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  man 
is  an  event  sure  to  occur  sooner  or  later,  though  the  time 
is  unknown;  the  preparation  for  the  event  is  not  de- 
pendent upon  a  knowledge  of  the  time,  but  must  be  con- 
tinuous, permanent.  In  the  very  nature  of  the  case  the 
householder  could  not  be  prepared;  but  the  disciple,  on 
the  other  hand,  both  can  be  and  ought  to  be  prepared. 
That  he  does  not  know  the  time  of  his  Lord's  return 
is  no  excuse  for  unpreparedness,  for  his  ordinary  activi- 
ties are  the  means  of  his  preparation,  not  a  hindrance  to 
it.  Hence  the  picture  of  the  servant  is  necessary  to  com- 
plete the  thought.  The  servant  is  ready  for  his  master's 
coming,  however  unexpected  the  time,  if  he  is  faithful 
in  the  discharge  of  his  daily  duties.  If  found  unpre- 
pared, he  will  not  think  of  pleading,  "I  knew  not  that 
you  were  approaching."  Such  an  excuse  would  aggra- 
vate his  guilt  and  add  to  the  severity  of  his  condemnation. 

Now  granting  that  action  or  conduct  is  the  only  true 
preparation  for  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  man,  the  ques- 
tion inevitably  follows, — "What  conduct?"  By  what 
form  of  activity  are  we  best  prepared  to  meet  the  return- 
ing Christ?  We  find  our  answer  in  the  supplementary 
parable.  The  faithful  and  wise  steward  was  at  no  loss 
what  to  do  that  he  might  receive  his  lord  with  gladness 

452 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  AND  THE  THIEF 

and  win  his  unqualified  approval.  He  simply  attended  to 
his  business  as  he  would  have  done  in  his  master's  pres- 
ence. He  made  no  special  preparation  for  his  return. 
He  did  not  arrange  a  magnificent  reception  with  a  ban- 
quet and  address  of  welcome.  Nor  did  he  call  the  house- 
hold from  their  wonted  occupations  to  watch  for  the 
master's  coming.  Nothing  of  the  kind.  He  merely  at- 
tended to  the  regular  needs  of  the  household,  "giving 
them  their  meat  in  due  season."  How  commonplace! 
Yet  that  is  the  complete  record.  The  most  ordinary  kind 
of  daily  service  regularly  and  faithfully  performed,  that 
is  the  conduct  that  receives  the  blessing. 

Is  it  difficult  to  discover  the  present  and  permanent 
application  of  the  picture?  I  think  not.  In  a  word,  it 
is  this:  God  does  not  require  of  his  servants  peculiar 
service  in  preparation  for  the  Master's  return.  We  shall 
best  prepare  for  the  extraordinary  emergency  by  faith- 
fulness in  the  most  ordinary  duties.  "To  do  justly,  and 
to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God" — these 
are  not  unusual  or  extraordinary  duties,  but  it  is  in 
doing  these  things  perfectly  that  we  prepare  ourselves 
for  whatever  may  come  to  us.  Whoever  neglects  these 
simple  duties  of  honesty,  justice,  kindness  and  piety, 
whoever  ignores  his  responsibility  to  family  or  society 
while  his  eyes  are  turned  heavenward  in  mock  sanctity 
to  watch  for  the  coming  of  his  Lord,  will  have  no  part 
in  the  millennial  joy. 

What  a  revelation  of  folly  and  unfaithfulness  occurred 
half  a  century  ago  when  multitudes,  filled  with  the 
sudden  expectation  of  the  Lord's  return,  forsook  all  their 
ordinary  occupations  and  gave  themselves  up  to  extrava- 
gant action  by  way  of  preparing  for  the  great  event! 
Business  was  neglected,  household  duties  were  left  un- 
done, farms  were  allowed  to  run  wild,  the  claims  of 
common  reason  and  right  were  ignored,  while  men  gave 
themselves  up  to  religious  frenzy  and  worship.     They 

413 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

were  like  servants  who  have  been  consciously  unfaithful 
during  their  master's  absence  and  who,  by  rushing  out 
to  meet  him  on  his  return  and  by  all  manner  of  unneces- 
sary attentions  and  fussy  activity,  seek  to  distract  his 
attention  from  their  unfinished  tasks  and  to  win  from 
him  words  of  praise  or  approval  which  their  unfaithful- 
ness does  not  merit. 

The  best  proof  of  faithful  and  acceptable  service  is 
not  seen  in  the  readiness  for  extraordinary  activity  when 
the  emergency  arises,  but  in  the  little  change  that  is  made 
necessary  by  such  a  crisis.  It  is  the  unfaithful  servant 
who  must  undertake  new  duties  and  enter  upon  fresh 
activities. 

To  some  minds,  yes,  I  fancy  that  to  the  majority  of 
minds,  the  thought  of  the  Lord's  coming  suggests  the 
unwelcome  or  the  dreadful.  To  the  true  Christian  it 
should  seem  a  joyful  event.  "Oh,  but  the  unexpectedness 
of  it !  If  I  could  only  know  when  he  will  come !" 
And  so  not  a  few  disciples  weary  their  minds  and  souls 
in  the  effort  to  interpret  the  prophecies  and  to  discover 
the  time  of  our  Lord's  second  advent.  Does  the  true 
servant  worry  because  he  does  not  know  just  when  his 
master  will  come  ?  Does  the  honest  bank  teller  or  cashier 
live  in  constant  dread  because  he  does  not  know  the  day 
or  the  hour  of  the  inspector's  visit?  No;  he  is  ready  all 
the  time.  The  inspector  may  come  to-day  or  to-morrow 
or  when  he  will,  and  he  will  find  everything  in  readiness. 
The  books  will  balance  to  a  cent.  Every  account  will 
be  clear  and  correct.  It  is  the  defaulter  who  wants  to 
know  when  he  shall  be  called  to  account.  It  is  the  dis- 
honest man  who  wants  time  to  doctor  his  accounts  so 
that  they  shall  seem  to  be  right  when  in  reality  they  are 
wrong. 

This,  then,  is  the  supreme  test  of  Christian  living.  Are 
you  conscious  of  anything  in  your  life  which  you  would 
wish  to  change  if  you  knew  that  the  Lord  were  coming 

454 


THE  HOUSEHOLDER  AND  THE  THIEF 

to-morrow?  That  very  consciousness  convicts  you  of 
present  unfaithfulness.  If  you  are  living  the  true  life, 
the  honest  life,  the  faithful  life,  then,  though  you  knew 
that  the  Christ  were  coming  to-night,  you  would  go  right 
on  in  the  course  you  have  planned;  and  when  he  came 
you  would  meet  him  with  gladness  and  receive  his  warm- 
est praise. 


455 


The  Peril  and  Penalty 
of  Uselessness 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

The  Peril  and  Penalty 
of  Uselessness 

THE  FRUITLESS  TREE 

Luke  13:6-9 

Text. — '^He  came  seeking  fruit  thereon,  and  found  none.'"'' — Luke  13:6 

THE  reign  of  law"  is  a  controlling  notion  in 
all  modern  scientific  thought.  More  than 
this,  the  phrase  is  a  popular  catchword 
with  the  unscientific  and  shallow  thinkers 
of  our  time.  We  all  take  delight  in  trac- 
ing the  lines  of  cause  and  effect  through  every  part  of 
our  life.  We  draw  the  parallels  in  the  material  and 
spiritual  worlds,  after  Professor  Drummond,  and  com- 
placently work  out  various  analogies  of  condition  and 
result,  fully  persuaded  that  all  this  is  very  new  and  very 
wise. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  idea  is  not  at  all  new  in  its 
general  application  to  human  life,  nor  has  it  always  the 
merit  of  being  wise.  From  time  immemorial  thoughtful 
men  have  tried  to  discover  a  cause  for  every  effect  that 
has  been  observed,  and  to  give  some  definite  statement 
to  the  laws  by  which  their  little  section  of  the  universe 
is  governed.  If  modern  science  has  really  contributed 
anything  new  in  this  direction,  it  has  been  only  by  way 
of  clearer  and  more  rational  interpretation  of  old  thought. 
Where  old-time  thinkers  got  the  lines  of  relation  tangled 
we  are  beginning  to  straighten  them  out;  where  they 
imagined  connections  that  had  no  real  existence  we  in- 

459 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

sist  on  tracing  each  strand  of  cause  to  its  true  source 
by  methods  of  careful  and  thorough  investigation. 

The  disciples  of  Jesus  saw  a  blind  man,  and  they  came 
to  the  Master,  saying,  "Who  did  sin,  this  man,  or  his 
parents,  that  he  was  born  blind?"  What  was  that  but 
a  recognition  of  the  reign  of  law?  The  disciples  were 
intelligent  enough  to  perceive  that  in  a  world  where  God 
controlled  all  things  by  his  omnipotence  that  blindness 
was  not  the  result  of  mere  chance,  and  with  their 
limited  data  for  reasoning  upon  such  subjects  they  natur- 
ally concluded  that  its  cause  must  be  sin,  for  which  the 
sufferer  was  either  directly  or  indirectly  responsible. 

Others  told  Jesus  of  the  Galileans  whose  blood  Pilate 
had  mingled  with  their  sacrifices,  and  of  the  eighteen 
Jews  upon  whom  the  tower  of  Siloam  had  fallen^  and 
they  plainly  implied  by  word  and  manner  that  those 
Galileans  and  Jews  must  have  been  exceptionally  sinful 
to  have  brought  upon  themselves  such  dire  calamities. 
Here  again  is  the  recognition  of  the  reign  of  law. 

True,  both  these  interpretations  of  the  idea  are  so 
crude  and  so  childish  that  we  of  the  present  day  dub 
them  superstition;  yet  we  ourselves  often  shoot  as  wide 
of  the  mark  as  did  these  same  old-time  religious  phil- 
osophers. Indeed^  we  are  quite  sure  to  repeat  their 
blunder  in  some  form  unless  we  supplement  our  recog- 
nition of  the  reign  of  law  with  an  equally  intelligent 
universal  recognition  of  the  reign  of  grace. 

It  was  to  illustrate  and  enforce  the  necessary  relation 
between  the  reign  of  law  and  the  reign  of  grace  that 
Jesus  spoke  the  parable  of  The  Barren  Fig  Tree.  While 
the  story  was  told  in  answer  to  the  question  of  his  im- 
mediate hearers,  it  comes  to  us  as  a  vivid  epitome  of 
the  gospel  of  grace  which  we  need  no  less  than  they. 
Its  truths  cluster  about  three  figures: — (a)  A  fruitless 
tree,  (b)  an  indignant  owner,  and  (c)  a  pleading  dresser. 

First  is  the  fruitless  tree.  'A  certain  man  had  a  fig 
tree  planted  in  his  vineyard;  and  he  came  seeking  fruit 

460 


THE       FRUITLESS      TREE 

thereon,  and  found  none."  Jesus'  questioners  had  been 
speaking  of  sin  and  sinners.  He  gives  them  a  picture 
of  the  supreme  sinner — the  useless  man,  the  fruitless 
soul.  No  lack  of  beauty  is  charged,  no  deformity,  no 
imperfection,  but  simple  fruitlessness.  We  talk  of  sins, 
of  vices,  of  crimes ;  but  this  is  the  crime  of  crimes,  the 
crowning  vice,  the  capital  sin — to  live  a  useless  life  that 
neither  helps  mankind  nor  enriches  the  world  by  its  ser- 
vice. Better  is  the  criminal  who  has  been  tempted  to  his 
crime  by  some  unexpected  stress  of  his  earnest  effort 
for  his  fellow  men  than  the  person  of  immaculate  char- 
acter and  eminent  respectability  who  devotes  all  his 
energies  to  "keeping  himself  unspotted  from  the  world." 

We  are  very  ready  to  trace  the  misfortunes  of  our 
most  earnest  and  active  brethren  to  their  mistakes  and 
wilful  errors,  but  we  are  slow  to  understand  that  our 
own  idleness  and  indifference  is  cause  sufficient  for  worse 
calamity.  As  one  has  truthfully  said,  "We  hear  so  much 
about  the  danger  of  wrong  thinking  and  the  danger  of 
wrong-doing.  There  is  the  other  danger,  of  not  doing 
right  and  not  thinking  right,  of  not  doing  and  not  think- 
ing at  all.  It  is  hard  for  many  people  to  understand 
that  there  is  danger  and  harm  in  that,  the  worst  of 
harm  and  danger." 

If  there  is  one  fact  which,  more  than  any  other,  im- 
presses itself  upon  the  mind  of  every  earnest  worker  in 
God's  kingdom,  it  is  the  way  in  which  the  vast  majority 
of  men  and  women  live  on  in  contented  uselessness  and, 
with  no  ill  will  but  all  good  wishes,  let  the  interests  of 
their  fellow  men  and  of  goodness  and  of  God  take  care 
of  themselves.  To  how  many  Christians,  even,  does  the 
religious  life  present  itself  in  the  enthusiastic  and  in- 
spiring aspect  of  working  and  fighting  for  God? 

Fruitlessness  indicates  a  lack  of  vitality.  And  there 
is  a  pitiful  lack  of  moral  and  spiritual  vitality  in  the 
world.  In  every  community  there  is  a  multitude  of 
useless  men  and  women,  yes,  of  men  and  women  per- 

461 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

fectly  satisfied  with  their  uselessness.  Many  a  one  if  he 
were  to  review  his  life  could  not  point  to  one  really  useful 
thing  in  any  large  sense  which  he  ever  did.  He  never 
stood  up  for  a  good  cause.  He  never  remonstrated  man- 
fully, positively,  against  any  evil.  He  never  helped  a  bad 
man  to  do  better,  or  rescued  a  good  man  from  falling 
under  temptation.  A  merely  useless  man.  He  might 
drop  out  of  the  host  to-morrow  and  none  would  miss 
a  soldier  from  the  ranks.  No  onset  or  defense  would  be 
the  weaker  for  his  going. 

Such  persons  are  frequently  popular  members  of  so- 
ciety, clever,  respectable,  genial  in  manner  and  pleasing 
in  appearance.  They  abhor  the  foulness  of  overt  sin, 
they  have  no  fellowship  with  that  which  is  low  or  vile, 
they  carefully  avoid  all  acts  that  would  soil  their  lives 
or  shock  their  friends,  but  withal  their  lives  are  fruitless. 

Fruitfulness,  what  is  it  but  fulfilling  the  one  great  end 
of  our  existence?  The  fruitless  tree,  however  symmet- 
rical in  form  or  resplendent  in  foliage,  is  a  total  failure 
as  a  tree  and  has  no  place  in  the  vineyard.  The  life 
that  bears  no  fruit  of  Christly  service  is  equally  a  failure, 
although  it  may  shine  with  the  adornments  of  culture  and 
learning  and  refinement. 

Let  us  look  upon  this  picture  of  the  fruitless  tree  till 
it  carves  its  message  deep  into  our  souls.  It  speaks  of 
uselessness,  of  failure,  of  the  very  essence  of  sin  and 
unworthiness.  Year  after  year  the  owner  cares  for  it 
and  gives  it  liberal  cultivation,  but  when  he  seeks  fruit 
he  finds  none.  What  wonder  that  the  second  figure  in 
the  parable  is  that  of  the  indignant  owner  of  the  vine- 
yard? "Then  said  he  unto  the  dresser  of  his  vineyard, 
Behold,  these  three  years  I  come  seeking  fruit  on  this 
fig  tree,  and  find  none:  cut  it  down;  why  cumbereth  it 
the  ground?"  Who  is  this  vineyard  owner?  Whom  or 
what  does  he  stand  for  in  the  kingdom  of  righteousness? 
God  the  Father?   Most  certainly  not!   For  the  Master  is 

463 


THE       FRUITLESS      TREE 

trying  to  show  his  disciples  that  this  is  not  God's  way  of 
dealing  with  men.  He  stands  rather  for  the  reign  of 
law  literally  interpreted.  His  spirit  and  command  rep- 
resent the  working  of  "natural  law  in  the  spiritual 
world"  if  the  element  of  grace  were  excluded. 

On  every  page  of  nature  this  law  is  written  in  clearest 
letters,  Fruitlessness  invites  destruction.  The  failure  to 
use  a  capacity  or  a  faculty  involves  its  loss.  The  neglect 
of  an  opportunity  hinders  the  recurrence  of  an  equal 
opportunity.  Professor  Drummond  tells  us  that  "there 
are  certain  burrowing  animals — the  mole,  for  instance — 
which  have  taken  to  spending  their  lives  beneath  the 
surface  of  the  ground.  And  nature  has  taken  revenge 
on  them  in  a  thoroughly  natural  way — she  has  closed 
their  eyes.  If  they  mean  to  live  in  darkness,  she  argues, 
eyes  are  obviously  a  superfluous  function.  By  neglect- 
ing them  these  animals  make  it  clear  that  they  do  not 
want  them,  and  as  one  of  nature's  fixed  principles  is 
that  nothing  shall  exist  in  vain,  the  eyes  are  presently 
taken  away.  There  are  fishes  also  which  have  to  pay  the 
same  terrible  forfeit  for  having  made  their  abode  in  dark 
caverns  where  eyes  can  never  be  required." 

The  unused  muscle  of  the  idler  grows  soft  and  feeble. 
If  it  be  kept  in  continual  idleness,  like  the  arm  of  the 
Indian  fakir,  it  will  finally  perish  beyond  the  possibility 
of  restoration.  The  unused  mind  gradually  lapses  into 
childishness  and  imbecility.  Not  less  surely  does  the 
neglect  of  spiritual  power  tend  to  spiritual  weakness 
and  death.  The  natural  and  perfectly  just  penalty  for 
moral  fruitlessness  is  moral  annihilation. 

I  say  that  this  penalty  is  not  only  natural  but  per- 
fectly just.  The  idler  is  taking  room  and  absorbing 
opportunities  that  might  be  employed  more  fruitfully  by 
others.  "Why  cumbereth  it  the  ground?"  is  the  indig- 
nant question.  The  universe  is  infinite,  and  there  is  no 
lack  of  opportunity  for  all  who  will  use  it,  but  in  all  the 
boundlessness   there   is   not   room   for  a   single    idler. 

463 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

Whoever  lives  a  useless  life  is  robbing  some  other  soul 
of  the  privileges  which  it  yearns  to  use. 

God  requires  fruit  from  every  life,  the  fruit  of  Christly 
character  and  service,  because  he  has  given  to  every  life 
the  power  to  render  such  fruit.  He  has  surrounded  each 
life  with  opportunities.  He  has  bestowed  upon  each  life 
great  possibilities.  H  one  is  not  bearing  fruit,  he  is 
hindering  some  other  soul.  The  opportunities  that  one 
neglects  another  might  improve,  God  only  knows  the 
immeasurable  damage  that  is  done  by  a  fruitless  church 
or  a  fruitless  life.  He  only  sees  how  many  earnest  souls 
are  deprived  of  opportunity  for  personal  growth  and 
service  by  the  selfishness  of  idlers. 

Every  fruitless  disciple  is  a  parasite  in  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  sapping  its  divine  life  and  giving  nothing  in 
return.  One  cannot  live  a  useless  life  without  injuring 
others  as  well  as  self.  If  the  only  result  of  neglect  were 
the  loss  to  oneself,  if  it  were  merely  to  forfeit  the  glory 
and  the  blessing  of  fruit-bearing,  that  would  not  be  so 
bad,  though  it  were  bad  enough;  but  when  our  failure 
involves  others  in  loss,  when  it  robs  the  very  treasury 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  of  its  riches,  then  the  unim- 
peachable justice  of  law  becomes  apparent. 

Nevertheless,  Law  is  not  the  last  word  of  the  parable. 
Law  is  not  the  absolute  monarch  of  our  life.  This  is 
God's  universe,  and  everywhere  the  reign  of  grace  may 
be  seen  softening  and  qualifying  the  reign  of  law. 

The  third  figure  of  our  picture  is  that  of  the  pleading 
dresser  of  the  vineyard.  Hear  his  voice  saying,  "Let 
it  alone  this  year  also,  and  I  will  give  it  yet  more  care 
and  cultivation,  and  then  if  it  bear  fruit,  well :  and  if  not, 
then  after  that  thou  shalt  cut  it  down."  Here  is  an 
element  of  the  divine  character  that  we  often  overlook. 
The  regularity  and  certainty  of  natural  law  are  unques- 
tionable, yet  they  are  not  mechanical  and  utterly  heart- 
less in  their  operation.  It  is  not  true  that  even  the  mate- 
rial universe  is  governed  by  an  inexorable  order  that 

464 


THE       FRUITLESS       TREE 

visits  every  failure  with  swift  and  severe  penalties.  On 
every  hand  there  is  at  work  another  law  that  tends  to 
mitigate  the  natural  consequences  of  error  or  neglect  or 
even  of  positive  rebellion. 

Notice  for  example  the  tremendous  recuperative  forces 
of  nature.  Whenever  an  accident  befalls  any  creature 
the  vital  forces  at  once  set  themselves  to  repair  the  dam- 
age. Nature  herself  is  the  best  of  physicians.  In  fact,  the 
best  and  wisest  of  human  physicians  can  do  nothing  more 
than  to  secure  the  most  favorable  conditions  for  nature  to 
accomplish  her  beneficent  work.  A  bone  is  broken, 
and  the  surgeon  sets  the  bone,  as  we  say;  but  setting  a 
bone  does  nothing  towards  healing  the  fracture.  The 
knitting  of  the  severed  parts  must  be  done  by  the  forces 
of  nature,  and  there  are  certain  processes  that  at  once 
set  themselves  in  operation  for  this  very  purpose.  It  is 
the  manifestation  of  the  work  of  grace.  So,  too,  when 
some  one  of  God's  children  transgresses  a  moral  law  or 
yields  to  some  evil  habit,  the  natural  result  would  be 
a  rapid  and  overwhelming  growth  of  evil.  Following  the 
law  of  seed-sowing  and  harvest,  every  sin  indulged 
would  produce  a  harvest  of  evil  which  would  bring  forth 
in  its  turn  a  greater  harvest  till  the  life  was  a  hopeless 
wreck.  But  here  again  the  reign  of  grace  is  manifest  in 
the  continuous  intervention  of  motives  and  influences 
that  work  together  to  restore  the  will  and  strengthen 
right  purpose  till  evil  is  rooted  out  and  the  life  is  re- 
established in  purity  and  uprightness. 

Grace  always  tempers  the  working  of  law  in  God's 
universe,  because  it  is  God's.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
inexorable  law.  Between  the  two  principles  there  is  no 
antagonism.  Grace  and  law  work  together  for  a  com- 
mon end,  and  that  end  is  salvation.  By  all  means  to 
save  man  and  to  perfectly  redeem  the  race,  that  is  the 
purpose. 

Law  inexorable  in  its  working  would  make  of  every 
sinner  a    Judas,   hopeless   in   his    unavailing   remorse. 

465 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

Only  grace  could  restore  a  Peter  after  his  base  denial. 
There  is  not  a  disciple  who  cannot  make  his  own  the 
words  of  the  poet — 

"With  mercy  and  with  justice 
My  web  of  time  he  wove: 
And  aye  the  dews  of  sorrow 
Were  lustered  with  his  love." 

But  even  grace  will  not  defend  perpetual  fruitlessness. 
Opportunity  may  be  prolonged,  but  it  has  a  limit,  and 
continued,  persistent  uselessness  must  finally  result  in 
destruction.  Let  us  not  forget  that.  Grace  is  not  a  sop 
for  uselessness,  but  a  stimulus  to  hopeful  activity  and 
earnest  service. 

One  cannot  read  this  parable  without  feeling  that  it 
makes  for  itself  a  very  direct  and  vivid  application  to 
present  life  and  thought.  Pharisee  and  publican,  Jew  and 
Galilean,  disciple  and  caviler,  all  disappear  as  if  by  mag- 
ic, and  in  their  places  we  see  the  Church  and  the  dis- 
ciple to-day.  It  is  our  false  philosophy  th-at  Jesus  is 
answering.  It  is  our  false  standard  of  life  and  duty 
that  Jesus  is  rebuking.  And  this  is  the  essence  and 
meaning  of  his  message — the  peril  and  the  penalty  of 
fruitlessness. 

That  barren  fig  tree,  does  it  not  truthfully  represent 
many  a  church  and  many  an  individual  life  among  us? 
How  often  has  God  come  to  your  life  and  mine  by  his 
Spirit,  seeking  fruit  and  finding  none!  Yet  it  has  not 
been  for  lack  of  culture  and  care,  not  for  lack  of  spirit- 
ual privilege  or  opportunity.  It  would  seem  as  though 
the  Almighty  had  well-nigh  exhausted  the  wealth  of  his 
kingdom  in  pouring  out  blessings  upon  the  people  of  this 
generation  and  this  land.  We  are  the  heirs  of  all  the 
spiritual  inheritance  of  the  ages.  We  are  exalted  to 
heaven  in  the  matter  of  moral  and  religious  privilege. 
Not  a  soul  in  the  age  and  land  but  enjoys  opportunities 

466 


THE       FRUITLESS      TREE 

that  call  for  highest  achievement.  We  ought  to  be 
saints,  every  man  and  woman  of  us.  Yet  our  lives  are 
pitifully  fruitless.  We  render  exceedingly  small  returns 
for  this  great  spiritual  outlay. 

I  sometimes  wonder  that  God  does  not  sweep  away  the 
Church  of  the  twentieth  century  as  he  swept  away  the 
Hebrew  nation  and  as  he  swept  away  the  churches  of 
the  Apocalypse.  And  so  he  surely  would  were  he  the 
mere  administrator  of  a  fixed  system  of  law.  The  life 
of  the  Church  in  this  age,  the  repeated  opportunities  for 
spiritual  attainment  and  service  that  present  themselves 
to  us,  all  are  witnesses  to  the  reign  of  grace. 

But  who  shall  say  how  soon  the  day  of  grace  may  come 
to  an  end?  Who  shall  say  how  soon  the  voice  of  mercy 
shall  join  with  the  voice  of  justice  and  judgment  in  the 
stern  command,  "Cut  it  down"?  Oh,  let  the  study  of 
this  parable  awaken  us  to  earnest,  faithful  service,  that 
when  next  the  Lord  of  the  vineyard  shall  come,  he  may 
find  a  full  return  for  all  his  care  and  love. 


467 


Excuses 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

Excuses 

THE   GREAT   SUPPER 

Luke  14:16-24 

Text. — *'/  pray  thee  have  me  excused,  ^^ — Luke  14:18 

MEN  like  to  be  humbugged,"  said  Barnum, 
the  renowned  showman.  The  saying 
proves  him  a  wise  philosopher.  So  well 
do  men  like  to  be  humbugged  that  many 
will  humbug  themselves  when  no  one  else 
will  do  it  for  them. 

There  are  certain  delusions  born  of  the  Fall  which 
men  cherish  with  wonderful  tenacity.  They  are 
handed  down  from  generation  to  generation  as  a  perpet- 
ual legacy,  and  they  seem  no  less  fascinating  to-day  than 
they  were  in  the  remotest  ages  of  the  past.  Men  hold 
them  often  at  the  peril  of  their  immortal  souls. 

Let  a  single  example  sufiQce  for  illustration.  Where 
can  you  find  a  man  who  does  not  flatter  himself  that  deep 
down  in  his  heart  he  loves  righteousness  and  hates  sin? 
Ask  the  indifferent  man,  or  the  selfish  idler,  or  the  open 
sinner,  or  the  tempter  of  his  fellows,  the  outwardly  re- 
spectable or  the  abandoned  wretch,  and  each  will  tell 
you  that  he  admires  the  most  perfect  purity  and  holiness 
and  that  he  would  choose  above  all  things  else  such  a 
character  for  himself,  that  he  longs  for  it  and  strives  for 
it,  but  that  in  his  case  it  is  unattainable.  Nature,  sur- 
roundings, temperament,  circumstances,  all  combine  to 

471 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

put  the  coveted  prize  beyond  his  reach.  In  other  words, 
they  all  wish  to  be  godly,  but  God  will  not  let  them. 

Against  this  particular  delusion  is  aimed  the  parable 
of  The  Excuses.  Jesus  is  sitting  at  a  feast  in  the  house 
of  a  leading  Pharisee^  and  is  surrounded  by  persons  who 
are  quite  ready  to  discuss  his  teaching  in  the  abstract, 
but  who  have  no  desire  for  personal  enlightenment  or 
salvation.  As  is  his  wont,  he  seizes  the  opportunity  to 
utter  some  pointed  and  practical  truths,  and  the  con- 
versation is  becoming  a  trifle  one-sided  and  uncomfort- 
able for  some  of  his  listeners. 

Just  at  this  moment  one  of  the  audience,  wishing  to 
show  how  perfectly  they  all  accord  with  Jesus  on  the 
vital  point  of  the  desire  for  righteousness,  exclaims, 
"Blessed  is  he  that  shall  eat  bread  in  the  kingdom  of 
God!"  It  was  a  brilliant  remark — so  true,  so  pious, 
above  all,  so  well  sounding.  Can  you  not  almost  hear 
the  murmur  of  approval  that  ran  around  the  whole  com- 
pany? Can  you  not  see  that  look  of  relief  that  hails  the 
glittering  generality  as  a  foil  to  the  sharp  thrust  of 
Jesus'  words?  More  than  one  in  the  company  said  in 
his  heart,  "I  wish  I  had  said  that."  And  every  man 
among  them  responds  with  a  silent  "Amen!" 

Yes,  I  doubt  not  the  speaker  really  thought  he  meant 
what  he  said.  And  the  rest  of  the  company  thought  they 
meant  it  too.  The  delusion  that  they  longed  to  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  God  was  the  very  essence  of  their 
religion,  as  it  often  is  of  ours. 

But  the  Master  is  not  at  all  dazzled  by  this  brilliant 
utterance.  To  him  it  is  transparent  nonsense,  and  he 
immediately  prepares  to  prick  the  bubble  of  platitude, 
and  to  destroy  the  glittering  but  unsubstantial  delusion. 
A  parable  is  his  chosen  instrument;  and  these  are  its 
salient  points : — 

A  certain  man  made  a  supper,  and  bade  many.  At 
supper  time  he  sends  out  his  servants  to  call  the  guests 
to  the  feast.     Instead  of  coming,  they  send  back  flimsy 

472 


THE       GREAT        SUPPER 

excuses  for  staying  away.  Indignant  at  the  slight,  the 
host  sends  out  his  servants  once  and  again  to  gather  in 
whomsoever  they  may  from  the  streets  and  lanes,  that 
his  house  may  be  filled. 

Nothing  is  said  of  the  effect  of  the  story.  Nothing 
need  be  said.  There  can  be  but  one  effect.  The  bubble 
has  burst.  For  that  brilliant  exclamation  was  only  a 
bubble — glitter  and  gas,  that  is  all.  It  could  not  bear 
the  touch  of  hard  truth. 

Blessed  is  it  to  eat  bread  in  the  kingdom  of  God? 
Then  why  are  you  not  doing  it?  Why,  when  the  invi- 
tation comes,  when  the  opportunity  offers,  do  you  hold 
back?  Why  do  you  put  this  blessedness  from  you  with 
all  manner  of  excuses  and  subterfuges  and  falsehoods? 
Why  do  you  satisfy  yourself  with  commonplace  delights 
when  this  supreme  blessing  is  within  your  reach? 

No  one  of  his  hearers  could  fail  to  recognize  his  own 
likeness  in  the  parable.  Even  the  pious  old  humbug 
who  had  voiced  the  popular  delusion  so  perfectly  could 
not  doubt  that  this  was  a  true  reflection  of  himself,  in- 
vited to  the  feast  which  he  had  declared  so  blessed  but 
inventing  excuses  for  staying  away.  The  parable  is  a 
most  complete  answer  to  all  who,  like  this  man,  deceive 
themselves  with  the  notion  that  they  long  for  the  life 
of  God's  kingdom  but  are  not  permitted  to  enjoy  it.  See 
how  it  unmasks  their  delusion  at  every  point. 

First  of  all,  the  delusion  rests  upon  the  idea  that  the 
heavenly  and  the  earthly  life  are  necessarily  antagonis- 
tic. The  pleasures  of  the  kingdom  are  really  the  high- 
est and  best,  but  they  imply  the  loss  of  all  earthly  joy. 
The  godly  life  is  the  life  unnatural,  a  gloomy,  solemn, 
straitlaced  life,  that  can  be  enjoyed  only  by  persons 
of  a  very  peculiar  disposition  and  that  is  wholly  imprac- 
ticable for  the  average  person,  especially  in  youth.  Such 
is  the  notion  that  has  obtained  in  many  minds  through- 
out the  ages. 

The  introduction  to  the  parable  is  aimed  at  this  notion. 

473 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

"A  certain  man  made  a  great  supper."  A  supper! 
There  is  the  symbol  of  true  earthly  pleasure,  especially 
to  an  Oriental  mind.  By  no  other  figure  could  our  Lord 
have  expressed  to  that  audience  so  attractively  the  idea 
of  real  happiness  as  by  a  feast.  This  is  his  favorite  sym- 
bol for  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Here  it  is  "a.  great 
supper."  Elsewhere  it  is  a  wedding  festival;  and  yet 
again,  the  marriage-feast  of  a  king's  son. 

According  to  the  common  notion,  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  like  a  funeral  procession,  slow  and  solemn. 
Its  atmosphere  is  laden  with  tears  and  sighs.  But  you 
may  review  the  whole  course  of  our  Lord's  teaching 
never  so  carefully  and  you  will  find  no  such  figures 
used.  No,  it  is  the  festival,  the  occasion  of  joy  and 
gladness,  the  most  delightful  thing  in  life.  Again  and 
again  the  divine  Artist  sketches  for  us  the  joyous  pro- 
cession, the  brilliantly  lighted  hall,  the  laden  tables,  and 
the  happy  company  gathered  together. 

What  is  his  thought?  Is  it  not  clear?  The  life  of 
holiness,  salvation,  religion,  is  really  a  joyful  thing.  That 
is  the  gospel  that  Jesus  preached.  God  does  not  com- 
mand us  to  purchase  future  peace  by  the  sacrifice  of 
truest  joy  here  and  now.  He  calls  us  from  the  husks  of 
the  swineherd  to  the  abundance  and  delight  of  the  royal 
banquet.  He  calls  us  to  the  largest  and  most  enduring 
happiness  for  young  and  old  in  this  present  life.  The 
unholy  man  knows  nothing  of  real  and  unqualified  hap- 
piness. If  you  want  to  make  the  most  of  this  world, 
be  a  Christian,  To  eat  your  daily  bread  in  the  kingdom 
of  God  will  transform  the  humblest  and  most  scanty 
meal  into  a  royal  feast. 

And  the  measure  of  your  enjoyment  will  be  the  degree 
of  your  consecration  and  self-sacrifice.  "When  the 
burnt  offering  began,  the  song  of  the  Lord  began  also 
with  the  trumpets."  The  song  always  begins  with  the 
sacrifice,  and  its  gladness  and  harmony  ever  keep  pace 
with  the  surrender  and  unselfish  effort.    If  you  have  seen 

474 


THE       GREAT       SUPPER 

unhappy  Christian  lives,  solemn  lives,  gloomy  lives,  it 
was  because  there  was  so  little  Christianity  in  them. 
Whole-hearted  Christianity,  unhesitating  sacrifice  and 
surrender,  makes  men  happy.  Every  true  disciple  ought 
to  be  perpetually  singing — "There  is  sunshine  in  my 
soul."  There  is  always  sunshine  and  gladness  and  music 
in  the  soul  that  is  given  up  to  pure  and  Christlike 
service. 

Again,  the  delusion  that  I  have  spoken  of  rests  upon 
the  notion  that  the  influences  of  this  world  are  all  against 
the  heavenly  life.  The  sinner  is  ever  ready  to  excuse 
his  sin  on  the  ground  of  temptation.  'T  would  do  right 
and  be  right,  but  my  temperament,  my  circumstances, 
my  surroundings,  all  combine  to  draw  me  in  the  wrong 
direction,"  says  even  the  most  ungodly.  And  the  Chris- 
tian Church  joins  the  general  chorus^  and  sings  — 

*Ts  this  vile  world  a  friend  to  grace, 
To  helo  me  on  to  God"  ? 

All  of  which  simply  means  that  God  has  so  made  us 
and  so  placed  us  that  it  is  practically  impossible  for  us 
to  do  what  he  commands.  Men  talk  of  temptation  as 
though  the  only  moral  forces  in  the  world  were  those 
that  draw  them  away  from  God.  Now  is  that  true?  Are 
there  no  temptations  to  righteousness?  Are  there  no 
forces  drawing  us  to  the  life  of  holiness  and  truth  ?  What 
says  the  parable? 

The  giver  of  the  banquet  sends  out  the  first  general 
invitation.  Then,  when  the  supper  is  ready,  he  sends  out 
his  servants  to  each  invited  guest  to  remind  him  that  all 
is  prepared.  And  when  the  invited  guests  reject  his 
kindness,  he  sends  out  with  greatest  urgency  to  bring 
in  others  to  take  their  places  that  the  banquet-hall  may 
be  filled  with  guests. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  difference  between  the  guests 
first  invited  and  those  called  later?    Whom  do  they  in 

475 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

each  case  represent?  That  is  a  question  with  which  we 
are  not  vitally  concerned.  I  see  here  not  so  much  a  sug- 
gestion of  the  difference  between  God's  chosen  people  and 
the  world  at  large  as  a  picture  of  the  divine  persistency 
in  seeking  to  fill  his  house.  God  wants  heaven  to  be 
filled.  He  wishes  you  and  me  to  enter  into  its  joy.  Too 
long  we  have  pictured  him  to  ourselves  as  indifferent  or 
even  as  hindering  us  from  coming.  Such  a  picture  is 
a  libel  on  the  character  of  God.  He  is  ever  throwing 
around  us  influences  to  draw  us  to  himself.  The  devil 
is  active  and  eager  in  his  efforts  to  entrap  and  destroy 
us,  but  God  is  more  active  and  eager  in  his  efforts  to 
save  us. 

You  say  there  are  numberless  temptations  for  you  to 
do  wrong.  Are  there  no  forces  to  help  you  to  do  right? 
Are  there  no  influences  to  draw  you  to  the  Christian  life  ? 
What  of  the  invitations  of  God's  Spirit  that  have  been 
repeated  to  you  many  times?  What  of  the  earnest 
appeal  of  the  Christian  Church?  What  of  the  eager 
desire  of  loving  friends  for  your  salvation?  What  of 
the  voice  of  conscience  within  warning  you  against  the 
wrong  and  urging  you  to  the  right?  I  tell  you  it  is 
easier  to  do  right  than  it  is  to  do  wrong,  easier  to  be 
righteous  than  to  be  sinful.  You  never  do  wrong  but  by 
the  positive  putting  away  of  the  influences  that  draw 
you  towards  the  right. 

Which  is  easier,  to  maintain  one's  physical  life  in  per- 
fect obedience  to  the  laws  of  health  or  in  disregard  of 
those  laws?  True,  one  need  make  no  effort  to  disre- 
gard those  laws.  He  may  do  harmful  things  without 
knowing  it.  He  may  take  poison  through  sheer  igno- 
rance. But  when  he  has  disobeyed  the  laws  of  health, 
then  it  requires  infinitely  more  pains  to  save  the  life  than 
it  would  have  required  in  the  first  place  to  avoid  error. 
So  it  requires  set  purpose  to  walk  in  the  way  of  right- 
eousness ;  but  once  the  life  is  given  to  the  service  of  God, 
habits  of  righteousness  are  formed,  ties  of  brotherhood 

476 


THE       GREAT        SUPPER 

are  knit,  and  there  is  an  increasing  force  of  good  influ- 
ence working  in  us,  daily  weakening  the  force  of  evil. 

You  think  that  God  is  against  you  in  the  struggle.  I 
repeat,  God  wants  heaven  to  be  filled.  He  wants  you 
now  to  live  in  and  to  enjoy  the  heavenly  life.  He  is 
working  and  pleading  for  that,  and  you  can  fail  of  it  only 
by  deliberately  putting  away  the  influences  which  at  this 
very  moment  he  throws  around  you. 

Now  look  at  the  third  point,  the  excuses  for  refusing 
the  invitation.  With  this  point  Jesus  punctures  the  de- 
lusion from  the  other  side.     What  are  the  excuses  ? 

a.  "I  have  bought  a  piece  of  ground,  and  I  must 
needs  go  and  see  it." 

b.  "I  have  bought  five  yoke  of  oxen,  and  I  go  to 
prove  them." 

c.  "I  have  married  a  wife." 

These  different  excuses  may  have  some  individual 
significance,  but  that  does  not  appear  to  us.  They  have 
one  common  characteristic,  absurdity,  and  that  is  enough 
for  the  purpose  of  the  parable.  Not  one  of  the  excuses 
has  any  foundation  in  reality.  The  first  two  matters 
could  easily  have  been  deferred  had  there  been  any 
desire  to  go  to  the  supper,  and  the  third  was  the  best 
of  reasons  for  going.  The  first  weeks  and  months  of 
married  life  were  ever  the  time  of  special  festivity  and 
holiday. 

Plainly  the  thought  is  this :  These  men  did  not  wish 
to  go  to  the  supper,  and  the  excuses  were  trumped  up 
for  the  occasion.  There  is  an  Oriental  fable  which  runs 
as  follows:  A  certain  man  went  to  his  neighbor  to  bor- 
row a  rope.  The  neighbor  replied,  *T  cannot  lend  it  to 
you,  for  I  am  using  it  myself  to  tie  up  a  heap  of  sand." 
"But,"  said  the  first,  "you  cannot  tie  up  sand  with  a 
rope."  "Oh,  yes,"  returned  the  other,  "you  can  do 
almost  anything  with  a  rope  when  you  do  not  wish  to 
lend  it." 

The  application  of  the  parable  is  no  less  plain  than  its 

477 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

interpretation.  The  reasons  which  men  give  for  not 
accepting  the  divine  invitation  are  false.  Often  their 
excuses  for  not  coming  to  God  are  the  best  of  reasons 
for  coming.  "The  sinner's  cannot  is  always  in  reality 
the  sinner's  ztnll  not." 

We  may  talk  as  we  please  about  the  blessedness  of  the 
heavenly  life.  We  may  persuade  ourselves  that  we  really 
long  to  live  that  life  and  to  share  its  joy.  But  if  we  are 
not  actually  doing  it,  the  one  reason  is  to  be  found  in 
our  own  wills.  Our  professions  of  desire  are  not  sin- 
cere. We  may  have  a  certain  admiration  for  the  true 
life  (and  who  does  not?),  but  there  are  other  things 
which  we  prefer.  If  we  choose  the  world  and  worldly  oc- 
cupations and  pleasures,  if  we  are  wholly  absorbed  with 
material  things,  it  is  because  we  believe  that  these  are 
more  immediately  profitable  and  pleasure-giving  than 
spiritual  things.  The  choice  is  ever  before  us  and  we 
are  free  to  take  which  we  will.  When  we  fail  of  the 
highest  and  best  life,  we  pity  ourselves  and  exclaim,  "We 
could  not" ;  but  God  says,  "Ye  zvould  not." 

Here,  then,  is  the  teaching  of  the  parable  in  a  few 
words.  The  life  to  which  God  calls  you,  the  Christian 
life,  the  life  of  holiness  and  self-sacrifice,  is  a  happy  life. 
The  heavenly  Father  does  not  wish  to  deprive  any  of  his 
children  of  good,  but  rather  to  give  them  ever  the  high- 
est good.  He  calls  you  to  a  feast,  to  a  life  of  joy  and 
gladness  for  this  world  as  well  as  for  the  world  to  come. 

Furthermore,  he  has  not  simply  provided  this  and  left 
you  to  choose  while  he  waits  the  issue  with  indifference. 
Still  less  has  he  made  it  hard  for  you  to  secure  the 
blessing,  placing  you  in  a  world  where  Satan  has  chief 
power  to  ensnare  you  with  his  wiles  while  you  get  no 
help  to  withstand  him.  God  has  surrounded  you  with 
influences  to  help  you.  He  has  sent  countless  messages 
of  invitation  to  you.  If  you  do  not  enter  into  the  heav- 
enly life  and  joy,  it  is  not  because  you  cannot,  but 
because  you  will  not. 

478 


THE       GREAT       SUPPER 

Be  honest  with  yourself.  Be  sincere.  Do  not  pretend 
that  you  wish  to  be  a  Christian  but  cannot.  Do  not 
deceive  yourself  with  the  notion  that  you  are  trying  to 
live  the  true  life,  when  all  the  while  you  prefer  another 
and  a  lower  mode  of  existence.  Look  yourself  squarely 
in  the  face  and  confess  that  you  are  not  a  Christian  sim- 
ply and  solely  because  you  do  not  wish  to  be  one.  You 
are  given  over  to  the  world.  Sincerity  is  the  first  step 
towards  better  things.  Be  honest  with  yourself  and 
then  you  will  be  prepared  to  hear  the  voice  of  God  more 
clearly. 

Many  are  the  messengers  that  God  has  sent  to  invite 
you  to  his  feast.  Many  are  the  voices  that  are  calling 
you  to  a  better  life.  Many  are  the  influences  drawing 
you  to  Christ.  Thousands  of  times  in  the  Scriptures  we 
find  the  blessed  word,  "Come."  On  the  last  page  of  the 
Bible  we  have  the  invitation  pressed  upon  every  reader 
with  cumulative  force,  as  though  God  were  loath  to 
cease  his  pleading: — 

"And  the  Spirit  and  the  Bride  say.  Come. 
And  let  him  that  heareth  say,  Come. 
And  let  him  that  is  athirst  come. 
And  whosoever  will,  let  him  come," 

and  eat  his  daily  bread  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 


479 


The  Christian  Ideal 
of  Duty 


§^ 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

The  Christian  Ideal 
of  Duty 

THE  PLOUGHING  SERVANT 

Luke  17:7-10 

Text.  —  '^Ifhen  yt  shall  ha^e  done  all   .     .     .    say,    .     .    .    IVe  haijt 
done  that  'which  it  nxjas  our  duty  to  do.''^ — Luke  17:10 

BLESSED  is  that  life  upon  which  the  word 
"Duty"  is  writ  large.  Such  a  life  will  not  fail 
to  be  noble,  fruitful,  and  in  the  truest  sense 
happy.  Few  words  in  the  language  are  more 
significant  than  this.  Would  you  learn  the 
secret  of  British  ciiaracter  and  supremacy?  Listen  to 
those  immortal  words  of  Nelson  as  he  prepares  his  fleet 
for  battle,  "England  expects  every  man  to  do  his  duty!" 
Do  you  ask.  Whence  came  the  moral  strength  and  pur- 
pose of  our  fathers,  which  enabled  them  to  overcome 
all  obstacles  in  the  settlement  of  a  new  land  and  to  im- 
press their  own  character  upon  succeeding  generations? 
I  answer.  It  sprang  from  the  profound  sense  of  duty 
that  was  closely  interwoven  with  the  very  warp  and 
fiber  of  their  life. 

And  this  word  "duty"  is  one  of  the  key-words  of 
Christianity.  Omit  it,  and  you  emasculate  the  gospel, 
you  make  the  religion  of  Jesus  a  mere  sentiment,  a  mat- 
ter of  whims  and  fancies  and  feelings.  Retain  it,  give 
it  a  worthy  place,  and  religion  becomes  virile,  puissant, 
stable.  Read  the  life  of  Jesus  and  note  how  frequently 
he  uses  the  word  "must"  regarding  himself.  From 
that  early  day  when  he  said  of  himself,  "I  must  be  about 

483 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

my  Father's  business,"  to  the  very  close  of  his  ministry, 
he  was  spurred  onwards  by  a  perpetual  "must,"  a  pro- 
found and  all-controlling  sense  of  duty.  Nor  was  it 
otherwise  with  the  great  apostle.  Hear  his  ringing  dec- 
laration, "I  am  debtor."  The  sense  of  indebtedness, 
which  is  the  essence  of  duty,  was  the  inspiration  of  his 
noble  life  and  untiring  service.  This  same  sense  of  duty 
is  the  foundation  of  all  manliness  in  religion,  the  pith  of 
all  moral  and  spiritual  power. 

The  parable  before  us  brings  us  face  to  face  with  this 
vital  principle  of  all  true  godliness.  It  finds  its  climax 
in  the  supreme  recognition  of  duty.  The  connection  of 
the  parable  with  the  preceding  verses  is  loose  and  some- 
what indistinct.  Practically  it  stands  alone  and  must 
be  interpreted  as  an  independent  picture.  Just  what  sug- 
gested it  to  Jesus'  mind  at  the  time  when  it  was  uttered 
is  not  easy  to  determine.  In  fact,  the  time  itself  seems 
really  indeterminate,  since  the  opening  portion  of  the 
seventeenth  of  Luke  is  made  up  of  utterances  apparently 
fragmentary  and  disconnected. 

It  is  not  difficult,  however,  to  imagine  the  conditions 
which  called  forth  the  parable.  The  tendency  to  be 
satisfied  with  partial  service,  to  set  narrow  limits  to  duty, 
to  aim  at  easy  honors  in  religion,  is  a  common  weakness. 
The  early  disciples  were  not  free  from  this  tendency. 
Only  by  the  constant  reiteration  of  higher  ideals  were 
they  gradually  led  forth  from  the  selfishness  of  their 
primitive  notions  to  a  conception  of  religious  life  and 
service  that  was  worthy  of  the  strongest  manhood. 

The  sketch  is  actual  rather  than  ideal.  Its  appeal  as 
a  picture  is  not  to  the  conscience  of  his  hearers,  but  to 
their  daily  experience  and  practise.  It  portrays  life  as 
it  is,  not  life  as  it  might  be,  or  as  it  ought  to  be.  It 
asks  not  what  God  would  do,  but  what  they  themselves 
would  do  and  expect  under  given  circumstances.  The 
reader  of  to-day  would  scarcely  sympathize  with  the 
somewhat  ungracious  master,  although  his  manner  and 

484 


THE     PLOUGHING     SERVANT 

conduct  would  doubtless  meet  with  the  unqualified  ap- 
proval of  those  to  whom  the  parable  was  spoken.  We  do 
not  see  in  this  man  a  perfect  representative  of  the 
heavenly  Father ;  nevertheless  the  picture  as  a  whole  is  a 
perfect  illustration  of  the  truth  which  it  is  designed  to 
teach.  The  high  lights  are  not  cast  upon  the  master  at 
all,  but  upon  the  spirit  and  expectation  of  the  servant. 
He  is  the  central  figure  of  the  sketch.  All  else  is  back- 
ground. 

Look,  then,  at  the  servant.  As  a  true  servant,  he  is 
wholly  occupied  with  service.  His  chief  concern  is  not 
with  thanks  or  praise  or  honor  or  wages,  but  to  do  well 
and  faithfully  the  work  that  falls  to  him.  Not  that  he 
is  a  drudge,  a  slave,  a  machine,  but  that  he  has  a  part, 
however  humble  it  may  be,  in  the  world's  work,  and  to 
make  that  part  complete,  perfect,  is  the  first  obligation 
of  his  life.  That  is  duty;  it  is  the  debt  he  owes  to  him- 
self, to  his  master,  to  God.  That  duty  is  absolute.  It 
is  not  conditioned  upon  his  master's  gratitude  or  kind- 
ness or  anything  else.  It  is  a  debt  that  he  is  bound  to 
pay  in  full. 

This  servant,  I  say,  is  the  central  figure  of  the  para- 
ble. He  is  the  true  type  of  discipleship  and  of  all  high- 
est service.  The  best  thing  about  a  great  deed  is  that 
it  be  done  without  thought  of  greatness  ;jgie  best  good- 
ness  is  unconscious  goodness.  What  a  splendid  picture 
of  heroism  is  presented  to  us  in  the  story  of  Nehemiah ! 
When  in  time  of  great  danger  that  noble  statesman- 
prophet  is  urged  to  flee  into  the  temple  for  safety,  he 
replies,  "Who  is  there,  that,  being  as  I  am,  would  go  into 
the  temple  to  save  his  life  ?"  That  question  enhances  the 
glory  of  his  action  tenfold,  for  it  proclaims  the  uncon- 
scious hero.  Nehemiah  thinks  it  is  but  commonplace, 
every-day  faithfulness,  such  as  any  other  in  his  position 
would  manifest.  In  point  of  fact,  not  one  man  in  a  thou- 
sand would  have  done  as  he  did.  Your  true  hero  is  al- 
ways modest,  because  he  never  knows  that  he  is  a  hero. 

485 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF    JESUS 

So  also  your  true  philanthropist  or  benefactor  never 
thinks  of  philanthropy.  Self-conscious  benevolence  is 
not  kindness;  it  is  often  the  most  painful  cruelty.  The 
service  or  self-sacrifice  that  keeps  a  careful  credit  ac- 
count and  ever  demands  due  appreciation  or  thanks  is 
a  sham  and  a  delusion.  The  loving  mother  is  unconscious 
of  any  sacrifice  as  she  freely  spends  time,  strength  and 
life  for  her  child,  even  though  that  child  repays  her  love 
with  base  ingratitude.  Any  sense  of  sacrifice  detracts 
just  so  much  from  the  glory  and  the  genuineness  of 
mother  love.  Expectation  of  thanks  will  dull  the  luster 
of  the  finest  action.  We  seek  to  prove  our  love  to  God 
by  our  readiness  to  take  up  this  or  that  "cross"  in  his 
service,  but  the  very  fact  that  we  call  our  service  a  cross 
is  evidence  of  the  weakness,  not  the  strength,  of  our 
love.  We  have  not  caught  the  true  ideal  of  Christian 
service  till  we  can  say  after  the  most  arduous  labor,  the 
most  exacting  sacrifice — 

"When  I'm  not  thanked  at  all,  I'm  thanked  enough. 
I've  done  my  duty,  and  I've  done  no  more." 

The  Christian  Ideal  of  Duty,  therefore,  is  the  topic 
which  our  parable  illuminates.  What  are  some  of  the 
distinctive  features  of  that  ideal  which  it  portrays? 

First  of  all,  to  my  mind,  it  speaks  this  truth.  Who 
seeks  earthly  praise  forfeits  heavenly  grace.  Any  sort 
of  work  that  is  done  for  pay  alone,  or  with  a  principal 
outlook  towards  some  reward,  degrades  the  workman, 
but  the  humblest  task  done  for  love  exalts  the  doer  and 
becomes  an  added  blessing  in  his  life.  The  servant  who 
always  looks  for  tips  inevitably  becomes  a  flunky  though 
he  be  a  collegian.  Even  the  artist  or  the  poet  may 
strangle  the  divine  spirit  within  him  for  the  sake  of 
wealth  or  fame  or  other  reward,  and  so  be  cast  down 
from  the  heights  of  genius  to  the  common  plane  of  hack 
or  artisan.    The  spirit  of  commercialism,  the  growing 

486 


THE     PLOUGHING     SERVANT 

habit  of  demanding  material  return  for  every  service 
rendered  to  individuals  or  society,  the  careful  balancing 
of  work  and  pay,  is  undermining  the  character  of  the  age. 
What!  Shall  we  not  receive  pay  for  our  work?  If 
not,  how  shall  we  live?  Certainly  we  must  receive  pay 
for  our  work;  but  always  the  first  and  most  prominent 
thought  of  the  workman  in  whatsoever  sphere  should  be 
of  his  work,  not  of  his  pay.  To  do  work  worthy  of  his 
manhood,  to  use  his  powers  fully  and  effectively,  is  every 
man's  duty  whether  he  is  fairly  paid  for  it  or  not.  Let 
him  make  sure  of  this  first,  that  he  is  doing  the  most  and 
the  best  work  of  which  he  is  capable ;  then  let  him  secure 
such  reward  as  he  may. 

The  best  service  is  never  adequately  paid  in  this  world. 
The  president  of  Harvard  College  receives  no  larger 
salary  than  the  chef  of  one  of  Boston's  leading  hotels. 
The  best  men  in  public  office,  whether  municipal  or 
national,  have  ever  been  those  that  have  accepted  the 
trusts  to  which  they  were  chosen  at  great  personal 
sacrifice.  They  are  men  whose  professional  or  business 
incomes  have  been  much  greater  than  the  salaries  re- 
ceived while  in  office.  In  fact,  the  man  who  seeks  a 
public  office  because  of  the  stipend  attached  is  not  worthy 
the  office  he  seeks.  He  who  limits  his  work  by  the  pay 
he  receives,  though  he  adjust  the  balance  never  so  accu- 
rately, is  a  public  malefactor.  Men  may  call  him  honest, 
but  he  cannot  escape  the  judgment  of  God,  who  calls 
him  unfaithful.  This  is  the  penalty  of  such  measured 
service — loss  of  joy  and  satisfaction  in  the  work  itself, 
deterioration  of  skill  and  power,  and  a  general  lowering 
of  the  whole  tone  of  manhood.  He  only  can  escape  the 
moral  and  spiritual  decay  that  result  from  commer- 
cialism who  resolutely  exalts  the  ideal  of  duty  above  re- 
ward, who  is  supremely  conscious  of  the  debt  he  owes 
to  the  world,  and  suffers  himself  to  forget  what  the 
world  owes  him. 

Not  to  win  applause  or  to  accumulate  merit,  but  to 

487 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

discharge  the  soul's  indebtedness,  is  the  ruling  motive 
of  every  true  life.  This  sense  of  indebtedness  does  not 
imply  a  slavish  spirit,  nor  does  it  make  drudgery  of  our 
life  work.  Understood  aright,  it  is  a  continual  inspira- 
tion to  tireless  endeavor;  its  result  is  growing  spiritual 
strength,  increasing  earnestness  and  devotion.  "Bless- 
ed are  the  poor  in  spirit;  for  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  says  the  Master;  and  the  unvarying  experience 
of  the  ages  proves  that  heavenly  grace  comes  not  to 
those  who  are  supremely  conscious  of  their  own  merit, 
but  rather  to  those  who  are  ever  conscious  of  duty, — 
i.  e.,  of  debt.  He  had  caught  the  first  lesson  of  our 
parable  who  wrote  the  lines, 

"Life  is  not  long  enough  to  let  me  work 
As  I  desire;  but  all  the  years  will  hold 
Shall  I  pour  forth.    Perhaps  it  may  be  mine 
To  do  some  deed  was  never  done  before, 
And  clear  my  obligation  to  the  world." 

A  second  truth  clearly  illustrated  by  our  parable  is 
this:  The  doing  of  one  duty  does  not  excuse  the  neglect 
of  another.  The  true  life  is  complete,  symmetrical. 
Moral  obligation  implies  perfection.  The  servant  in  the 
picture  held  a  twofold  position ;  he  was  both  an  outdoor 
and  an  indoor  servant.  Faithfulness  in  the  field  did  not 
release  him  from  the  duty  of  house  service.  Now  what- 
ever our  more  enlightened  modern  views  of  service  may 
lead  us  to  think  of  the  conditions  here  represented,  we 
know  that,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  times  in  which  the 
scene  was  enacted,  the  servant  as  well  as  the  master 
would  consider  the  twofold  demand  as  perfectly  reason- 
able ;  hence  it  is  a  clear  case  of  moral  obligation. 

As  such,  it  perfectly  represents  our  relation  to  duty  in 
the  highest  sense — our  duty  to  God.  Men  may  be,  men 
often  are,  unreasonable  in  their  demands  upon  us.  They 
require  that  which  is  beyond  our  power.    They  lay  bur- 

488 


THE     PLOUGHING     SERVANT 

dens  upon  us  which  we  are  unable  to  bear.  Not  so  with 
God.  With  him,  abihty  is  always  the  measure  of  moral 
obligation.  "She  hath  done  what  she  could"  is  the 
Master's  description  of  a  perfect  service.  The  same 
words  applied  to  any  life  would  testify  that  the  life  was 
perfect.  "I  ought,  therefore  I  can,"  is  the  statement  of 
universal  truth;  for  whatever  we  cannot  do  it  is  no  part 
of  our  duty  to  do. 

Yet  is  duty  more  far-reaching  than  most  of  us  are 
willing  to  acknowledge.  We  are  only  too  ready  to  con- 
tent ourselves  with  the  partial  and  the  incomplete. 
Because  we  are  faithful,  perhaps  conspicuously  zealous, 
in  some  one  sphere  of  service,  we  easily  condone  our 
neglect  in  another  sphere.  The  Pharisees  of  old 
imagined  that  because  they  scrupulously  tithed  the  mint 
and  the  anise  and  the  cummin  they  were  excusable  for 
neglect  of  "the  weightier  matters  of  the  law,  judgment, 
mercy,  and  faith."  The  modern  Pharisee  more 
often  makes  his  honesty  or  his  kindness  or  his  benevo- 
lence an  excuse  for  the  neglect  of  religious  life  and  ser- 
vice. The  one  position  is  as  irrational  as  the  other.  Both 
are  unchristian.  The  rocks  of  Scylla  are  no  less  fatal 
than  the  crags  of  Charybdis. 

There  is  no  clashing  of  duties  in  God's  kingdom,  no 
overlapping  of  obligations.  In  the  perfect  life  there  is 
room  for  all  service.  Each  part  exactly  fits  into  its 
corresponding  part,  so  that  there  is  no  crowding  or  dis- 
agreement. God's  plan  for  you  and  for  me  is  like  a  per- 
fect chord  of  music  in  which  all  the  different  notes  com- 
bine in  one  noble  harmony.  God  asks  of  no  man  any- 
thing that  he  has  not  the  time  and  the  strength  and  the 
sense  to  do  perfectly.  When  we  excuse  our  neglect  of 
one  class  of  duties  on  the  score  of  superior  faithfulness 
in  another  sphere,  the  Christ  of  to-day  replies,  as  of  old, 
"These  ye  ought  to  have  done,  and  not  to  have  left  the 
other  undone."  Halfness  is  infidelity.  Incompleteness 
is  sin.     Perfect  righteousness  is  the  only  righteousness. 

489 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

A  third  truth  Hes  on  the  very  surface  of  the  parable 
before  us.  Let  me  put  it  into  a  single  sentence:  There 
are  no  works  of  supererogation.  The  phrase  sounds 
strange  to  Protestant  ears,  but  to  the  Romanist  it  is 
familiar  enough.  "Works  of  supererogation,"  according 
to  the  teachings  of  the  Roman  Catholic  theologians,  are 
such  good  deeds  as  men  may  perform  over  and  above 
what  is  necessary  for  their  own  salvation.  They  are 
such  acts  of  benevolence  or  kindness  or  self-sacrifice  as 
surpass  the  requirements  of  morality  or  righteousness, 
and  are  therefore  specially  meritorious. 

Protestantism  repudiates  the  phrase  and  denies  the 
fact;  yet  in  many  a  heart  the  old  belief  still  lurks  under 
a  new  form.  Most  of  us  draw  a  line  somewhere  between 
the  ethical  and  the  super-ethical  or  saintly.  Some  extend 
the  bounds  of  duty  and  morality  far  beyond  the  limits 
set  by  others ;  yet  they  are  few  who  do  not  fix  a  standard 
within  which  all  is  duty  and  beyond  which  is  a  goodly 
circle  where  every  action  is  optional  and  implies  an  extra- 
ordinary degree  of  merit. 

In  this  outer  circle  we  are  wont  to  place  the 
sufferings  of  the  martyrs,  the  heroism  of  distinguished 
patriots,  the  sacrifices  of  missionaries,  the  gifts  of  the 
benevolent,  all  deeds  of  charity  and  kindly  service,  un- 
usual forbearance  and  the  spirit  of  continuous  forgive- 
ness. An  employer  pays  his  workmen  promptly  and 
justly,  and  we  call  it  ethical.  Out  of  his  weatlh  he  im- 
proves their  condition  and  we  call  it  benevolence.  A 
father  provides  for  his  family  and  we  call  it  duty.  From 
his  surplus  income  he  clothes  a  few  poor  or  extends  his 
care  beyond  his  immediate  family  circle  and  we  call  it 
charity.  A  brilliant  social  queen  maintains  a  pure  life 
and  an  unsullied  character  and  we  call  it  morality.  She 
manifests  an  interest  in  her  less  favored  sisters  or  devotes 
some  of  her  time  and  influence  to  the  rescue  of  the  fallen 
and  we  call  it  bounty. 

Thus  in  every  realm  we  distinguish  sharply  between 

490 


THE     PLOUGHING     SERVANT 

the  obligatory  and  the  optional.  The  one  class  of  acts, 
limited  and  definite,  represents  universal  duty;  the  other 
class,  infinite  in  its  range,  excites  our  admiration  but 
does  not  appeal  to  the  common  conscience.  To  pour 
out  one's  wealth  in  response  to  human  need,  to  give  one's 
life  freely  in  self-sacrifice  for  others,  this  we  readily 
acknowledge  to  be  a  universal  privilege,  but  seldom  think 
it  a  moral  necessity.  The  philanthropy  of  a  Howard, 
the  devotion  of  a  Florence  Nightingale  or  a  Clara  Bar- 
ton, the  munificence  of  a  Carnegie,  the  heroic  self- 
sacrifice  of  a  Mary  Reed,  these  and  all  similar  acts  we 
deem  extra  moral.  They  transcend  the  realm  of  duty 
and  are  to  be  reckoned  in  the  higher  realm  of  charity. 

Now  Jesus  knew  no  such  distinction.  To  him  nothing 
was  extra  moral,  nothing  was  transcendent.  The  su- 
preme act  of  self-renunciation  was  to  him  plainest  duty, 
and  power  to  its  utmost  was  fraught  with  moral  obliga- 
tion; and  this,  not  because  he  was  different  from  other 
men,  but  because  he  was  like  them.  Heroism,  sacrifice, 
benevolence — these  are  but  other  names  for  duty, 
plain  duty.  "When  ye  shall  have  done  all  those  things 
.  .  .  say,  We  are  unprofitable  servants;  we  have  done 
that  which  was  our  duty  to  do." 

Does  this  seem  a  hard  saying,  a  disheartening  ideal? 
It  will  cease  to  be  such  when  we  realize  that  duty  is  but 
opportunity  in  the  ore,  and  its  product  is  not  praise, 
even  though  it  be  the  praise  of  God ;  rather  is  it  charac- 
ter and  life.  For  salvation  is  not  a  judicial  pronounce- 
ment. It  is  an  actual  rescue  and  transfiguration.  If 
we  toil  and  sacrifice  and  suffer,  it  is  not  that  we  may 
satisfy  the  exacting  demands  of  a  sovereign,  but  that  we 
may  enrich  ourselves  with  all  the  fulness  of  the  highest 
life.  Too  often  we  picture  duty  as  a  hard  taskmaster 
standing  over  us  lash  in  hand  and  requiring  of  us  a  full 
tale  of  bricks  even  when  the  necessary  straw  is  withheld. 
It  were  nearer  the  truth  to  see  in  each  service  a  brick, 
in  each  sacrifice  a  block  of  finely  polished  marble,  which 

491 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

we  may  build  into  a  noble  palace  for  our  eternal  habita- 
tion. If  God  summons  us  to  toil  and  trial,  it  is  not  that 
he  may  be  enriched  or  in  any  way  profited  by  our  service, 
but  that  we  ourselves  may  be  redeemed,  sanctified,  glori- 
fied. 

Men  magnify  the  mere  incidents  of  service,  the  praise, 
the  blame,  the  thanks,  the  criticism.  The  Christ  ever 
magnifies  the  service  itself,  and  that  which  is  the  essen- 
tial fruit  of  service,  even  life  and  character.  Appreci- 
ation is  pleasant  and  material  rewards  are  gratifying, 
but  service  itself  is  necessary,  the  only  necessary  thing; 
and  there  is  no  service,  however  trifling,  however  ardu- 
ous, but  enfolds  within  itself  its  own  adequate  reward. 
That  it  makes  a  hero  is  the  amplest  recompense  of 
heroism,  though  no  monument  commemorate  the  deed 
or  any  word  of  grateful  recognition  be  ever  spoken.  Not 
the  name  of  saint  nor  a  place  in  the  Church's  calendar 
is  the  true  reward  of  martyrdom,  but  to  have  been  made 
saintly,  to  have  purged  away  the  dross  of  sin  and  brought 
forth  the  pure  gold  of  righteousness. 

We  externalize  God.  We  put  a  difiference  between 
his  glory  and  our  own  highest  good,  and  so  duty  seems 
hard.  Could  we  but  realize  continually  that  God  is 
within  us,  that  he  has  no  desire  for  us  apart  from  our 
perfect  happiness  and  well-being,  that  when  we  are 
working  for  God  we  are  in  reality  "working  out  our  own 
salvation,"  then  would  service  be  transformed,  and  every 
task  would  seem  a  privilege.  To  the  slave  every  small- 
est service  is  a  burden,  it  is  hateful.  But  the  free  man, 
toiling  for  his  own  enrichment,  rejoices  in  every  increase 
of  labor  that  promises  proportionate  return.  The 
student  for  joy  of  knowledge  and  discovery  takes  delight 
in  study  though  it  strain  his  eyes  and  waste  his  frame 
far  beyond  the  midnight  hour.  The  artist  for  the  very 
gladness  of  creation  toils  with  chisel  or  brush,  unwearied, 
long  after  the  artisan  has  laid  aside  his  tools  in  weari- 

493 


THE      PLOUGHING      SERVANT 

ness.     It  was  "for  the  joy  set  before  him  that  Jesus  en- 
dured the  cross  and  despised  the  shame." 

Then  let  us  rid  ourselves  of  this  slavish  idea  of  service 
that  dominates  mankind,  this  idea  that  sees  in  work  an 
enemy  and  a  curse,  and  aims  chiefly  at  external  rewards. 
Let  us  exalt  duty  until  it  shall  seem  to  us  a  noble  thing 
— yes,  the  noblest  thing;  and  we  shall  gladly  make  our 
own  those  eager  words   of   surrender   and   allegiance: 

"Stern  Daughter  of  the  Voice  of  God,  O  Duty ! 
I  myself  commend 
Unto  thy  guidance  from  this  hour; 
O,  let  my  weakness  have  an  end! 
Give  unto  me,  made  lowly  wise, 
The  spirit  of  self-sacrifice; 
The  confidence  of  reason  give ; 
And  in  the  light  of  truth,  thy  bondman 
let  me  live." 


493 


A  Concluding  Parable 
of  Jesus 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

A  Concluding  Parable 
of  Jesus 

THE  TWO  BUILDERS 

Matt.  7:24-29;  Luke  6:46-49 

Text. — ^^He  is  like  a  man  building  a  house.  " — Luke  6:48 

JESUS  sums  up  the  preface  to  his  greatest  series  of 
parables  in  the  words,  "Take  heed  how  ye  hear." 
Had  he  seen  fit  to  condense  this  concluding  para- 
ble in  a  similar  way,  its  exhortation  would  be, 
"Take  heed  what  ye  do,"  For  as  the  significance 
of  the  former  parable  turns  upon  hearing,  so  the  lesson 
of  this  one  is,  the  importance  of  doing.  To  properly 
apprehend  truth  we  must  hear  it  aright,  there  must 
be  attention,  appropriation,  assimilation.  To  make  the 
truth  of  any  value  to  our  lives,  we  must  put  it  into 
practise.     Its  worth  is  measured  in  units  of  action. 

"The  great  question  regarding  every  man  is  not,  How 
much  truth  does  he  put  into  his  creed?  but,  How  much 
truth  does  he  put  into  his  life?"  The  practical  value  of 
every  creed  must  be  estimated  by  its  influence  on  char- 
acter and  conduct.  Truth  is  worthless  if  it  be  not  trib- 
utary to  action.  The  learning  that  does  not  trans- 
figure life  is  a  dead  loss.  Practise  is  the  goal  of  all  true 
preaching.  Even  the  gospel  finds  its  sole  vindication  in 
the  growing  righteousness  of  the  peoples  that  have  re- 
ceived it.  Jesus  Christ  did  not  thrust  himself  before  men 
as  an  expounder  of  new  truths.  He  did  not  come  to 
establish  a  new  school  of  theology  or  philosophy.     The 

497 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

world  already  had  truth  enough.  The  mind  of  man  was 
overburdened  with  hair-splitting  philosophy,  and  men's 
souls  were  bewildered  with  contradictory  and  impracti- 
cable religious  dogmas. 

Jesus  came  to  clear  away  much  of  the  useless  rubbish 
which  blocked  the  pathway  of  human  salvation.  He 
came  to  lead  men  in  the  practise  of  truth  as  old  as  eter- 
nity. He  came  to  regenerate  human  life  and  action. 
When  the  multitudes  listened  with  wonder  to  his  simple 
but  searching  discourses,  he  said  to  them  again  and 
again,  "Be  not  mere  hearers  but  doers  of  the  truth." 
Other  religions  were  speculative.  Their  teachings  were 
far  removed  from  the  affairs  and  activities  of  every-day 
life.  The  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ  touch  life  at  every 
point,  Qiristianity  as  set  forth  in  his  ministry  is  simply 
religion  as  an  applied  science. 

It  was  at  the  close  of  that  most  remarkable  discourse, 
"The  Sermon  on  the  Mount,"  that  Jesus  spoke  the  para- 
ble of  The  Two  Builders.  I  have  taken  the  sketcn  out 
of  its  original  setting  and  chronological  position,  yet  I 
have  done  no  violence  to  its  meaning  or  purpose.  I 
propose  to  use  it  precisely  as  the  ^Master  used  it — as  a 
final  blow  of  the  hammer  to  drive  home  a  series  of  prac- 
tical and  important  truths.  It  is  not  an  independent  or 
isolated  lesson.  It  is  rather  a  concluding  appeal,  a 
final  word  of  application  to  a  more  extended  homily,  a 
barb  to  the  arrow  already  fiown. 

We  have  been  studying  together  the  entire  series  of 
our  Lord's  parables.  We  have  brought  forth  from  the 
divine  treasure-house  things  new  and  old.  Now  the 
vision  is  past.  The  matchless  panorama  is  completed. 
We  close  the  book  and  are  about  to  lay  it  aside;  but  the 
Great  Teacher  bids  us  tarry  a  moment.  While  the  pic- 
tures are  still  fresh  in  our  minds  he  will  enforce  the 
lessons  they  have  suggested.  "The  words  of  the  wise 
are  as  .  .  .  nails,"  says  the  writer  of  Ecclesiastes.    True 

498 


THE       TWO        BUILDERS 

enough !  And  a  nail  is  the  more  secure  if  clinched. 
The  parable  of  The  Two  Builders  is  a  clincher. 

Listen !  "Every  one  that  cometh  unto  me.  and  heareth 
my  words,  and  doeth  them.  I  will  show  you  to  whom  he 
is  like :  he  is  like  a  man  building:  a  house,  who  digged 
and  went  deep,  and  laid  a  foundation  upon  the  rock :  and 
when  a  flood  arose,  the  stream  brake  against  that  house, 
and  could  not  shake  it :  because  it  had  been  well  builded. 
But  he  that  heareth.  and  doeth  not.  is  like  a  man  that 
built  a  house  upon  tlie  earth  without  a  foundation; 
against  which  the  stream  brake,  and  straightway  it  fell 
in ;  and  the  niin  of  that  house  was  great."'  Such  is  the 
parable  in  its  less  familiar  form  as  recorded  by  Luke.  The 
simplicity  and  directness  of  the  utterances  almost 
preclude  the  necessity  of  exposition.  Diflicult  indeed  is  it 
to  make  either  clearer  or  more  forcible  that  which  is  in 
itself  so  perfectly  lucid.  The  application  lies  upon  the 
ver>-  surface. 

As  mere  specimens  of  literature  the  parables  are 
unique.  The  stories  and  sketches  are  classic.  We  admire 
them  as  the  artistic  soul  admires  a  rare  collection  of 
beautiful  pictures.  We  may  study  them  as  realistic 
tales  of  Oriental  life  and  manners.  We  may  take  a 
scholar's  delight  in  tracing  out  their  many  and  varied 
lines  of  analog)'  and  in  bringing  to  light  the  almost  end- 
less shades  of  tnith  which  they  present.  We  may  ex- 
haust their  stores  of  figure  and  fact,  of  illustration  and 
argn-unent ;  and  with  all  this  we  may  utterly  fail  to  dis- 
cover their  tnie  value  or  to  appropriate  tlie  blessing 
which  they  are  designed  to  convey. 

We  have  many  diverse  canons  of  interpretation.  We 
announce  our  principles  and  lay  down  our  rules.  Yet, 
after  all  has  been  said  and  written,  there  is  but  one 
ultimate  and  infallible  rule  for  interpreting  the  parables, 
one  method  of  extracting  the  kernel  from  all  of  Jesus' 
teachings.  They  must  be  iiitcrprcteLi  in  the  life.  The 
heavenly  vision  must  be  made  an  earthly  reality. 

499 


THE     TEACHINGS     OF     JESUS 

Every  parable  embodies  a  principle,  and  the  exhorta- 
tion of  Him  who  spake  the  parable  is  not  "Admire," 
or  "Discuss,"  or  even  "Believe,"  but  "Do.'"  "Let  this 
principle  inspire  to  action,  direct  effort,  control  purpose." 
"Upon  this  truth  lay  the  foundations  of  character  and 
conduct."  You  may  be  saying  in  your  heart  that  you 
have  gained  some  new  ideas  from  this  review  of  our 
Lord's  words.  Very  likely.  But  have  you  formed  any 
new  purposes?  Have  you  entered  any  new  fields  of 
service?  Have  you  cultivated  any  new  graces  of  charac- 
ter, or  developed  any  new  skill  or  strength  in  action? 
In  short,  has  this  review  of  the  parables  led  you  to  do 
anything  nobler,  better,  more  helpful  than  before  ?  This 
is  the  question  of  questions,  the  ultimate  test  of  the  value 
of  the  parables  to  you. 

Let  us  be  specific.  There  is  the  parable  of  The  Sower. 
Has  it  made  you  a  more  earnest,  attentive  and  fruitful 
hearer  of  God's  truth?  Has  the  parable  of  The  Ten 
Virgins  stimulated  you  to  a  more  careful  and  thorough 
cultivation  of  character?  You  have  admired  the  action 
of  The  Good  Samaritan  as  portrayed  in  the  Gospel  page, 
but  has  your  study  of  his  example  made  you  more 
neighborly?  How  about  those  parables  on  prayer — 
The  Friend  at  Midnight,  The  Importunate  Widow,  the 
Pharisee  and  the  Publican?  You  grasped  their  meaning 
perhaps  more  clearly  than  ever  before,  but  have  your 
own  prayers  been  more  persistent,  more  trustful,  more 
genuine  than  they  formerly  were?  The  parable  of  The 
Talents  has  been  studied  in  vain  unless  we  have  brought 
forth  our  talents  from  their  hiding-places  and  put  them 
at  interest  for  the  enrichment  of  their  owner.  The 
parable  of  The  Pounds  might  as  well  have  been  un- 
uttered  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  or  spoken  to  lifeless 
rocks,  if  we  are  not  striving  for  the  tenfold  increase  in 
our  own  lives.  So  we  might  go  over  the  entire  list  of 
the  parables.  If  there  be  a  single  parable  the  lesson  of 
which  we  have  not  reproduced  in  our  own  lives,  that  para- 

500 


THE     TWO        BUILDERS 

ble  is  a  dead  letter  to  us  and  might  as  well  be  blotted 
from  the  Bibles. 

It  is  not  the  parable  in  the  New  Testament  that  is  to 
bless  mankind,  but  the  parable  in  human  life.  When 
we  can  read  in  the  daily  conduct  of  every  Christian  the 
lesson  of  The  Good  Shepherd,  of  The  Marriage  Feast, 
and  of  The  Good  Samaritan,  then  we  may  be  sure  that 
the  millennium  is  not  far  away. 

Thus  much  by  way  of  general  suggestion.  Turn  we 
now  to  our  parable  for  more  specific  study  and  inter- 
pretation. 

"Every  one  that  .  .  .  heareth  my  words,  and  doeth 
them, ...  is  like  a  man  building  a  house,  who  digged 
and  went  deep,  and  laid  a  foundation  upon  a  rock." 

"Building  a  house."  First  we  see  a  general  sugges- 
tion. Looking  upon  that  word  "house"  as  generic,  it 
becomes  simply  a  typical  structure,  a  building.  From 
this  point  of  view  it  may  represent  any  architectural 
creation  from  a  cottage  to  a  cathedral,  from  a  warehouse 
to  a  watch-tower.  As  such  it  is  the  embodiment  of  ex- 
ternal beauty  or  of  material  strength  and  stability. 

But  this  does  not  exhaust  the  symbolism.  The  house 
stands  for  a  home.  It  is  a  specific  word  as  well  as 
generic.  It  has  a  social  no  less  than  an  architectural 
significance.  "An  Englishman's  house  in  his  castle," 
says  the  popular  proverb.  About  the  word  "home" 
cluster  thoughts  of  refuge,  of  rest,  of  security  and  peace. 

First,  then,  let  us  think  of  this  word  "house"  as  an 
architectural  term.  We  are  looking  at  a  building,  a  struc- 
ture merely.  We  are  concerned  with  the  laws  of  stabil- 
ity, the  conditions  of  permanence  and  strength.  From 
this  point  of  view  the  house  of  the  parable  becomes  a  type 
of  human  character,  of  the  "House  not  made  with  hands." 
Every  disciple  of  Jesus  Christ  is  an  architect.  Every 
hearer  of  truth  is  a  builder  of  some  sort.  We  are  build- 
ing, all  of  us  whether  we  will  or  no,  for  time  and  for 
eternity.      The  figure   is  a   common   one   and    vividly 

501 


THE      TEACHINGS      OF      JESUS 

suggestive.  Character  or  soul  is  the  grandest  of  all 
human  creations.  It  is  a  work  of  measureless  impor- 
tance to  the  builder;  and  the  conditions  of  success  for 
the  spiritual  builder  are  no  less  definite  and  clear  than 
those  which  govern  his  fellow  craftsman  in  wood  and 
stone. 

"Souls  are  built  as  temples  are, — 
Sunken  deep,  unseen,  unknown, 
Lies  the  sure  foundation  stone. 
Then  the  courses  framed  to  bear, 
Lift  the  cloisters  pillared  fair. 
Last  of  all  the  airy  spire. 
Soaring  heavenward,  higher  and  higher. 
Nearest  sun  and  nearest  star. 

Souls  are  built  as  temples  are, 
Based  on  truth's  eternal  law, 
Sure  and  steadfast,  without  flaw. 
Through  the  sunshine,  through  the  snows, 
Up  and  on  the  building  goes ; 
Every  fair  thing  finds  its  place, 
Every  hard  thing  lends  a  grace, 
Every  hand  may  make  or  mar." 

Now  the  first,  the  immediate  aim  of  the  gospel  is  the 
transformation  of  character.  The  most  fatal  result  of 
sin  is  not  the  sorrow  and  misery  which  it  causes,  how- 
ever great  these  may  be,  but  rather  the  decadence  of 
character,  the  loss  of  soul,  the  gradual  but  certain  defac- 
ing of  the  divine  image.  And  Jesus  came  that  man 
might  receive  power  to  restore  that  which  had  been  lost 
through  sin,  to  rebuild  that  which  the  arch-enemy  had 
thrown  down. 

Christian  culture  and  progress  have  given  to  the  world 
many  a  noble  pile  of  masonry :  a  St.  Peter's  in  Rome,  a 
St.  Paul's  in  London,  a  Cologne  carthedral,  a  Westmin- 

503 


THE       TWO       BUILDERS 

ster  Abbey,  and  the  numberless  temples  and  cathedrals 
and  churches  that  are  found  in  every  part  of  Christen- 
dom; but  these  with  all  their  beauty  and  grandeur,  with 
all  that  they  represent  of  labor  and  cost  and  consecra- 
tion, are  not  for  a  moment  to  be  compared  with  those 
infinitely  nobler  structures  that  adorn  the  landscape  of 
the  ages,  the  characters  of  Christ's  worthy  followers,  the 
saints  named  and  unnamed  in  every  clime,  who  by  doing 
the  words  of  Jesus  at  whatever  cost  of  pain  and  sacri- 
fice have  at  last  built  the  completed  temple  like  the  pat- 
tern shown  them  in  the  Mount. 

The  sayings  of  Jesus  are  the  plans  of  the  divine  Archi- 
tect for  the  building  of  the  perfect  life.  Our  deeds  are 
the  stones  with  which  we  build  day  by  day  the  growing 
structure  of  character.  If  these  deeds  are  molded  by  the 
teachings  of  Christ,  if  they  faithfully  reproduce  the  pkn, 
then  will  the  character  which  we  build  be  true  and  Christ- 
ly.  It  will  be  the  expression  of  moral  strength  and  sym- 
metry. It  will  be  firm  and  immovable,  and  proof  against 
the  storms  of  trial  and  temptation.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  see  and  admire  the  plan  but  fail  to  reproduce 
it  in  our  conduct,  then,  although  we  may  for  a  time  pre- 
sent a  fair  appearance  to  the  world  and  may  flatter  our- 
selves that  we  are  as  good  as  others,  the  first  storm  of 
trial  will  betray  our  weakness  and  overthrow  the  struc- 
ture which  we  have  built. 

This,  I  say,  is  the  first  and  general  message  of  the 
builder;  but  there  is  a  second  element  in  the  symbolism 
of  our  parable.  The  word  "house"  suggests  the  specific 
as  well  as  the  generic;  it  represents  not  a  building 
merely,  but  a  home  with  all  the  hallowed  associations, 
the  precious  ideals,  the  blessed  influences  that  are  en- 
folded in  that  word. 

Seen  in  this  light,  the  house  becomes  the  type  of  the 
soul's  eternal  hope.  It  symbolizes  all  that  is  included  in 
that  broad  and  often  misused  term  "salvation."  There 
is  the  sense  of  security  and  assurance  that  all  is  well. 

503 


THE     TEACHINGS      OF     JESUS 

There  is  rest  of  soul,  peace  with  God,  and  peace  with 
self.  There  is  moral  strength  and  spiritual  equilibrium 
that  cannot  be  disturbed  by  the  turmoil  of  the  world. 
There  is  also  the  hope  of  a  yet  brighter  and  more  glorious 
heaven  in  the  future.  "In  my  Father's  house  are  many 
mansions,  .  .  .  I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you." 

Between  the  mere  "house"  and  the  true  "home"  the 
difference  is  heaven-wide.  This  difference  is  quite  inde- 
pendent of  the  external  appearance  of  the  structure. 
Some  of  our  public  institutions,  our  hotels,  our  asylums, 
our  retreats,  yes,  even  many  of  our  prisons  are  far  more 
elegant  and  costly  structures  than  the  cottages  of  the 
poor;  yet  the  meanest  hut  that  embodies  a  true  home  is 
unspeakably  dearer  to  the  souls  that  find  refuge  there 
than  is  the  most  splendid  pile  of  masonry  that  has  no 
further  purpose  than  to  furnish  a  center  where  a  given 
number  of  human  beings  may  gather  to  eat  and  drink 
and  sleep  and  find  protection  from  the  inclemency  of  the 
weather. 

Is  not  a  like  contrast  easily  drawn  between  the  charac- 
ter that  is  fashioned  upon  the  most  perfect  principles  of 
lifeless  moral  philosophy  and  the  character  that  grows 
out  of  a  loving  fellowship  with  Jesus  Christ  in  the  daily 
life;  between  the  righteousness  which  is  of  the  law  and 
the  righteousness  which  is  by  faith?  Here  is  your 
merely  philosophical  moralist  who  fashions  his  life  by 
certain  maxims.  "Honesty  is  the  best  policy,"  he  says; 
therefore  he  is  honest.  "Virtue  is  its  o^n  reward"; 
therefore  he  is  virtuous.  Now  it  may  be  that  the  char- 
acter thus  constructed  is  noble  and  grand,  but  it  is  with- 
out joy,  without  vitality.  There  is  no  real  peace,  no  per- 
manent blessing  growing  out  of  it.  It  is  the  soul's  lodg- 
ing-place, but  not  its  home.  Let  the  proverbs  prove 
themselves  apparently  false,  let  the  trusted  principles  fail 
in  some  crisis,  and  instantly  everything  is  swept  away. 

Over  against  this  place  the  life  of  the  humblest  and 
most  imperfect  disciple  who  lives  the  life  of  faith.    To 

504 


THE       TWO       BUILDERS 

him  every  moral  triumph  is  more  than  a  fulfilment  of 
moral  law,  more  than  a  block  in  the  great  temple  of  char- 
acter; it  is  the  manifestation  of  love  for  the  heavenly 
Father,  a  strengthening  of  the  family  ties  that  bind  to- 
gether God  and  his  child,  a  source  of  personal  happiness 
for  the  present  and  a  seed  of  hope  for  the  eternal  future. 
"The  Christian's  Secret  of  a  Happy  Life"  is  indeed  a 
secret  wholly  unknown  to  the  moral  philosopher  who 
builds  his  character  day  by  day  in  dogged  obedience  to 
the  Hfeless  principles  of  his  science.  Between  mere 
moral  character,  however  perfect,  and  a  true  Christian 
life  and  hope  the  distance  is  infinite.  The  one  is  a 
spiritual  prison-house,  costly  and  grand  it  may  be,  but 
still  a  prison,  confining,  repressing,  galling  the  soul's 
true  life;  the  other  the  "home  of  the  soul,"  free,  rest- 
ful, joyous. 

The  ideas  embodied  in  the  words  "house"  and  "home" 
are  easily  distinguishable,  but  the  facts  for  which  those 
words  stand  are  never  separable.  True,  you  may  have 
a  house  without  a  home,  but  you  can  never  have  a  home 
without  a  house  of  some  sort.  Many  of  our  noblest 
specimens  of  architecture  were  built  for  purposes  far 
other  than  the  furnishing  of  a  home  for  man.  Some 
of  the  most  costly  mansions  of  the  wealthy  fail  to  satisfy 
the  craving  of  those  who  occupy  them  for  homes.  But 
the  home-spirit  must  have  a  permanent  structure,  though 
it  be  the  humblest,  in  which  to  take  up  its  abode.  The 
tent  of  the  wandering  Arab,  the  teepee  of  the  wild  In- 
dian, the  canvas-covered  prairie-schooner  of  the  emi- 
grant, none  of  these  could  by  any  possibility  become  the 
seat  of  a  true  home.  It  is  when  man  first  builds  a  struc- 
ture that  affords  at  least  some  slight  shadow  of  perma- 
nence that  the  notion  of  home  becomes  possible.  Then 
and  not  till  then  does  there  spring  up  in  the  human  life 
that  element  of  strength  that  makes  for  national  stability 
and  continuance.     From  the  tent  of  the  nomad  to  the 

505 


THE      TEACHINGS       OF      JESUS 

home  in  a  fixed  abode  is  a  long  stride  in  national  life 
and  civilization. 

Following  the  analogy  thus  suggested,  we  may  dis- 
tinguish between  character  and  salvation,  but  we  can 
never  separate  them.  A  certain  moral  character  we  may 
have  without  eternal  hope,  but  there  can  be  no  real  hope 
for  time  and  for  eternity  that  is  not  coupled  with  a  Christ- 
like character.  True  peace  and  rest  of  soul,  the  hope 
for  eternity  that  cannot  be  shaken,  dwell  only  in  him 
who  is  conscious  of  a  glad  obedience  to  the  words  of  the 
Master. 

Doubtless  many  men  have  cherished  a  hope  for  the 
future,  many  have  testified  in  glowing  terms  to  their 
high  expectation,  whose  characters  have  been  far  from 
Christly.  (The  writer  of  "Home^  Sweet  Home"  was  a 
homeless  wanderer.)  Doubtless  also  many  have  attained 
to  a  high  degree  of  respectability,  have  justly  earned 
a  glorious  reputation  for  moral  excellence,  who  have 
cared  nothing  for  God  or  for  Jesus  Christ.  But  how 
often  have  they  been  swept  away  by  some  great  flood 
of  temptation  or  trial !  A  house  may  stand  if  it  be  not 
too  large  upon  the  soft  earth,  so  long  as  the  sun  shines 
and  all  is  fair.  It  is  the  storm  that  undermines  and 
overturns  it.  So  the  soul  may  cherish  a  delusive  hope 
and  may  rest  in  self-satisfied  comfort  so  long  as  all  goes 
well,  even  though  its  hope  be  ill-founded.  It  is  the  storm 
and  stress  of  life  that  test  the  value  of  spiritual  founda- 
tions. By  these  the  false  hope  is  swept  away,  the  mis- 
taken confidence  is  undetermined  and  its  weakness  be- 
trayed. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  complete  and  perfect  structure 
of  the  spiritual  building  that  cannot  be  shaken.  Deep 
and  strong  upon  the  rock  Christ  Jesus  is  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  active  obedience  to  his  teachings.  Upon  this  solid 
base  rises  grand  and  symmetrical  the  structure  of  a  true 
Christian  character,  a  saintly  soul.  This  sanctified  soul 
becomes  the  abode  of  a  hope  that  can  never  be  destroyed, 

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THE       TWO        BUILDERS 

a  hope  that  shall  live  through  all  vicissitudes  of  time, 
and  when  time  shall  be  no  more  shall  blossom  out  into 
the  realized  bhss  of  eternity. 

"Unfading  Hope!  when  life's  last  embers  burn, 
When  soul  to  soul  and  dust  to  dust  return, 
Heaven  to  thy  charge  resigns  the  awful  hour ! 
O,  then  thy  kingdom  comes !  Immortal  Power ! 
What  though  each  spark  of  earth-born  rapture  fly, 
The  quivering  lip,  pale  cheek,  and  closing  eye! 
Bright  to  the  soul  thy  seraph  hands  convey 
The  morning  dream  of  life's  eternal  day — 
Then,  then,  the  triumph  and  the  trance  begin, 
And  all  the  phoenix-spirit  burns  within." 


507 


DATE  DUE 


DEMCO  38-297 


'^'Ai 


BS2418.H875- 

The  teachings  of  Jesus  in  parables, 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00012  9157 


